Financial Samurai

Friday’s post entitled, “The People Asked To Get ROCKED And A Boulder Fell On Their Heads” wasn’t supposed to go up.  I’m trying to limit the amount of big government love related posts, but “every time I try and get out, they pull me back in”!  Let the record show that I’m not against Democrats, I’m just disappointed in the system.  I do apologize to readers for the John Edwards of the world though.  At least politicians make life a little less boring.

The Samurai Fund is down 2.7% YTD, which compares favorably to the S&P 500 down 3.7% YTD.  Still, losing money is disappointing and I wonder if we have to change our outlook and investments given the anti-capitalism rhetoric by the government.  Should we raise cash?  Sell some of the winners?  Need some thoughts from the contributors and readers in general who have investments in the markets.

Perhaps now is the best time to open up the fund to 2 or 3 new entrants given the declines.  I will need help from someone to do a screen shot each week, because my 12″ monitor on my rocking 5 year old iBook G4 can only fit 17 entries!

The Freedom Fund continues to chug along slowly, with a $2,000 increase for January.  Nothing special, just savings from cash flow.

VIDEOS AND POSTS OF THE WEEK Read more…

The Rock Of Gibraltar, Only Backwards

Anybody want to guess what happened on Wed, January 19th right before the market fell off a cliff?  If you guessed Obama delivered a politically charged speech to rally for his own support and crucify others, you’re right!  On Wed, January 19th, Obama went on national TV to tell the world, “we want our money back” and “if they want a fight, a fight is what they’ll get.” The “they” of course, are “greedy rich” people.  The markets immediately started to sell-off and the S&P 500 is now down about 6% since.

Good old fashion class warfare is never good for the economy, neither is continuous political jibber jabber.  Do you ever remember a president being on TV as much as our current president?  The risk of overexposure is very real, and the record low approval rating for any president at this point in his term shows this.  The State of The Union address is supposed to be an opportunity to unify the people.  Besides the typical feel-good rhetoric, what I heard was a continued attack on others, protecting personal interest groups, and maintaining giant silos.

YOU SO CRAFTY NEBRASKA Read more…

Author: Phil Villarreal was a syndicated film critic (one of the best jobs on earth) and is a general reporter for the Arizona Daily Star.  Phil contributes to OK! Magazine and blogs at becauseitoldyouso.com.

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.  244 pages in soft cover.  $12.95.

Summary: “Secrets of A Stingy Scoundrel” is a hilarious book that has been reviewed by many personal finance sites already.  Hence, I’ll take a slightly different approach.

First of all, Phil is one proud cheapo who is potentially helping millions of Americans (if they buy his book) save thousands of dollars a year.  Second of all, the breadth of stinginess is impressive, with nine chapters: Personal, Eating, Relationships, Household, Finance, Leisure & Entertainment, At The Workplace, Corporate Cataclysm, and Gross, Mean and Just Plain Wrong. Read more…

Everybody was quietly watching the puppet show at the Asian Art Museum when I hear a “boooooooP!” What was that, I think to myself as a stench waffles in the air.  Someone must have farted!  I look around to see if I can identify the culprit.  Then I notice others looking around, with some staring right at me!

“Not me!” I silently voice with my lips as I point towards a kid rolling around on the floor in front of the stage.  “Probably the kid!” I mime again with each crease of my lips extending more exaggerated with every word.

Once the show was over I tap the kid on the shoulder and say, “Hey buddy, you got me in a lot of trouble with the adults.  The bathroom is over there!”

“Sorry sir, I was just farting.  Everybody likes to fart right?” replies the kid with a big, teethy smile.

“You’re right buddy, listen to this one!” KABOOM!  I let one rip right next to him.  We laugh and go on our separate ways.

THE MORAL HAZARD OF AMERICA Read more…

Ready, Set, Go! From now on, all advertising revenue after operating costs will be donated to charity!  I’ve finally got off my rump to figure out this peculiar aspect of blogging.

For the past 6 months I’ve been very disinterested in advertising.  The only thing that did interest me was practicing “free-writing”, meeting new folks, and learning new things.  I played around with various advertising platforms like Adsense early on, and I just scratched my head wondering who would click on ads such as “600% Penny Stocks”?  What if the advertiser was a scam?  For those who use Adsense, more power to you.  It’s my own personal issue for not being entirely comfortable with their platform.

As I learned more about advertising online, I realized there were other solutions to my pre-screening desires.  One solution is to sign up with affiliate advertising networks such as LinkShare (thanks Matt Bell), where I can screen hundreds of advertisers beforehand to provide relevant solutions or interests to readers.  We still will never know with 100% certainty the veracity of the products (Enron anybody?), but at the very least, it’s one level higher than putting up contextual advertisements where we have no control over.

It’s important that advertising never alters the spirit of this site. We will not be like politicians, swayed by corporate interest groups and their tantalizing dollars.  If there’s a product we like we’ll endorse it and introduce the product to others.  If not, we just won’t bother no matter how attractive the incentives.  Making money online is a learned skill that takes time to cultivate.  The best ads are those which are unobtrusive and relevant.

MIND SHIFT Read more…

The average tax refund is $2,400 a year, and 74% of Americans get a tax refund. I’ll consider you average for argument’s sake.  At today’s typical savings rate of 1%, you’re missing out on a whopping $12 bucks in interest income! Why $12, and not $24? It’s because you have to calculate the average balance of the year if you saved every $200/month payment diligently starting January 1st i.e. January $200, February $400, March $600 etc.

I’m definitely not a proponent of giving the government more money than they deserve, but missing out on $12 bucks in interest is something I can live with and so should you.

You have to ask yourself whether you have the discipline of saving that extra $200 a month, or using it to pay down debt. Most people are not disciplined enough to pay down debt and avoid buying junk. This is why we have such massive debt problems in the first place!  The government is essentially helping you “go broke to win big” by protecting 75% of American tax payers from blowing $2,400 a year without even knowing it.

A SIMPLE GUIDELINE & SOME COOKIES Read more…

This is a guest article by one of the community’s most well regarded bloggers, Flexo from Consumerism Commentary. Flexo is currently on a ten-day, ten-venue tour.  You can follow him on Twitter @Flexo.  Please enjoy and share your thoughts!

Three of my friends experienced difficulties in their lives around the same time, about ten years ago. I’ll call them Alex, Brian, and Chris. Each had their own problems to deal with, but they chose to ignore their difficulties and search for easy answers that focused on short-term solutions rather than long-term success. Before long, their lives erupted in chaos. That chaos helped them make positive changes, but the outcomes would have been predictable to anyone paying attention.

Alex worked for a non-profit organization since the day he graduated college. It was a great job and he loved his work. He could have chosen any career with his wide variety of talents and his strong aptitude. Alex had the potential to earn signficiantly more money than he would while working for that organization, but he knew since high school he wanted to move his life in this direction. Living with this job was difficult, however.

Alex chose to remain in an apartment near his friends so he commuted three hours total every day. For his meager salary, he worked 80 hours a week including weekends. Even if he wanted to earn extra income on the side, he had no time because his life was completely consumed by his job. And it continued to affect him financially, unable to afford rent, food, and basic necessities.

After a late night at the office, Alex returned to his apartment and found all of his belongings removed from the bedroom and piled in the living room. He hadn’t paid his rent for a few months, nor did he communicate his problems, so the unofficial landlord kicked him out. Read more…

There’s a fun hypothesis saying that you are the average of the closest five people around you.  I believe this to be true, do you?  What’s interesting about the blogosphere community is that anybody with enough intention can start a website.  Some are interesting, some are not, but regardless we can all compete with the ProBloggers and the Huffington Posts of the web in our own niche way!

Alexa is a dynamic website ranking and information company owned by Amazon, which has over 40 million users world wide.  The tool bar is free, and easy to download.  The Yakezie Alexa Ranking Challenge is straight forward.  If you’re outside of the top 200,000, get in the top 200,000 within 6 months.  I can’t even name 100 sites, let alone 199,999 sites.  Can you?  If you’re already in the top 200,000, get in the top 100,000.  And if you’re already in the top 100,000, get in the top 50,000.

There are some who poo poo the Alexa ranking system, and I recognize their two main arguments:  1) The system only tracks visitors who have the Alexa Toolbar installed, and 2) There are cases where some websites with bazillions of users have a worse ranking than sites with less users.  We don’t know why, because we don’t fully know what goes into the calculations.  It may be because readers don’t visit and just read off their RSS.  That said, the Alexa ranking system continues to grow, and is the best system we got.  At least 40 million webmasters around the world think so, and there has to be something to it if Google, Facebook, Yahoo and YouTube are ranked #1, #2, #3, and #4, respectively.

Since starting this site, I’ve been rejected as a guest poster, didn’t even get responded to, let alone make it as one of the 7 finalists for one site’s staff writer tryouts, denied admission to a personal finance blog network, and even got my first carnival submission rejected.  But through all the rejections, I took comfort in my friend, Alexa, who is always by my side motivating me to keep going.  I’m sure many of you have been rejected as well.  Here’s your chance to create our own network of powerful friends by joining in on the challenge!

BENEFITS OF BEING IN THE TOP 200,000 Read more…