Financial Samurai

The last month of the first quarter is upon us.  Now is as good a time as any to revisit our new year’s resolutions to make sure we’re on track.  I’m on pace to achieve 4 out of 8 so far: 1) meet 36 new people, 2) see the good in others, 3) stay consistent, but not obsessive over this site, and 4) save 50% of my gross income.  Regarding the other four goals, I’m not on pace to make a million bucks, haven’t won any tennis tournaments, nor have I been regularly practicing my acoustic guitar or cooking skills.  Better get cracking!

With 10 months left in the year, it’s time to really ramp up the creative juices and think up some back-end business to help create additional income.  Tennis season is starting up and I plan on doing everything possible to give myself at least a physical edge over the competition.  Finally, from now on at least one hour every weekend will be dedicated to guitar and cooking.

In terms of predictions for 2010 it’s still too early to tell, but 4 of 5 have held up so far: 1) inflation and interest rates remain low with the 10-yr yield still below 4%, 2) the USD dollar has strengthened, 3) the markets have not double dipped, and 4) The Samurai Fund is outperforming the S&P 500 by 2.64% as of Feb 28.  Regarding #5, it’s just a matter of time before Facebook goes public and Twitter gets bought out don’t you think?  We’ll revisit the predictions mid year and see if they still hold true!

Readers, how are you guys doing with your new year’s resolutions?  If you wrote any prediction for 2010, I’d love to see them so feel free to post your links below.

FINANCIAL SAMURAI ARTICLES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

* “Be A Sloth And Don’t ROTH – Why Converting to A ROTH Is A Mistake”

* “How To Get Your Super Motivated Boyfriend (SMB) To Marry You”

* “Do “C” Students Deserve “A” Lifestyles?”

* “Someone Always Farts In A Crowd – The Moral Hazard Of The World”

* “Let Freement Reign! Spending Paralysis, Material Lust and Obsession”

* “Where Americans Pay The Most To Live And Why”

HIGHLIGHTS FROM AROUND THE BLOGOSPHERE: Read more…

$1,780 is what it cost to book two last minute tickets to Lost Island.  I let the web page sit for a while, hesitant to click away a nice chunk of savings.  But what’s the use of money if it’s not spent?  We can save and save and save until we have some magical number we call “enough.”  Or, we can live for experiences that will last until our memories gray.

Why is it that some of us have spending paralysis over good times, but spend so easily on material things?  My fear was due to the impermanence of the experience, and the permanent loss of money.  That was some time ago when I had little savings.  It’s different now.  Memories are always what makes me smile the most.  It’s as if good memories blossom with time.

Readers, what are your thoughts on impulse spending for experiences?  Can spending on experiences be considered less imbecilic than spending on things?  If so, why should there be a difference?

The Samurai Fund: +2.1% YTD vs. -0.53 S&P 500.  I’m making room for a couple new picks to replace a couple existing picks due to inactivity and performance.  Shoot me an e-mail if interested and please read the guidelines first.

Yakezie Alexa Challenge: Stay tuned for a large update this Wed, Feb 24.  We’ll discuss what happens when the rules change on us, how to deal and flourish!  I will introduce a new initiative which should be able to help more members.  Keep on promoting others Yakezies!

HIGHLIGHT POSTS OF THE WEEK Read more…

Dr. Troy from Nip/Tuck

I had the pleasure of speaking with Flexo & Tom from Consumerism Commentary the other day about the genesis of this site, The Samurai Fund, as well as various Codes of Honor.  To go soon after one of my favorite authors, David Bach of the Automatic Millionaire series is a treat!

Why is it always so funny to hear yourself speak?  For a couple minutes before the interview I tested out my native Australian accent.  Realizing the audience would hail mostly from the US, I decided to scratch my bush tongue and speak in a more conventional “American” accent.  Hope the enunciation was clear.  Thanks to my mates Julian McMahon who plays Dr. Christian Troy from Nip/Tuck and John Noble aka Dr. Walter Bishop on Fringe for the inspiration!

To listen to podcast #43 on Consumerism Commentary click here.  When the Plutus Awards come out, they’ve got my vote for “Best Podcast” for sure!

Three main points of contention in the interview:

1) How much do you think luck plays in investment success?

2) Do you believe people can truly retire after 20 years of work, no matter what job they do?

3) Why are some people against the code of “get in first, leave last” during the initial phase of one’s career?

Readers, feel free to share your opinions on any of the above points and provide feedback from the podcast!

Regards,

Sam @ Financial Samurai – “Slicing Through Money’s Mysteries”

Follow on Twitter @FinancialSamura and subscribe to our RSS or E-mail feed.

What a coincidence that both Valentine’s and Chinese New Year fall on the same day.  In fact, if you’re Chinese who celebrates Valentine’s Day, this could be the luckiest year of your life!  For those who aren’t, you still have 20 more years until 2030 to change your identity.  Let’s look at a couple of similarities between Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year.

COLOR: Red is the default color for love and happiness.  Love > Money = Happiness as we explored recently.  If you’ve got love in addition to money, well then, you’re really one lucky barbecue pork bun!

TRADITION: The Chinese give young-ins “hong bao”, or red envelopes stuffed with money to sway them to be good.  Lovers also give their honeys money indirectly through dinners, flowers, chocolates, and spa massages, to sway them to do…. you decide.

Chinese civilization has been around for over 5,000 years.  Perhaps they are the original inventors of Valentine’s Day, spaghetti, sushi, and the running man dance.  Hmmmm.

The Samurai Fund: We are killing it team!  We didn’t capitulate on Toyota Motors, and dog poop Monster Worldwide wins this year’s #1 Super Bowl commercial.  TSF is up 0.13% year to date vs. the S&P 500 down 3.55%. As a result of our massive outperformance in this rocky market, Warren Buffet is giving us another $100 million to invest.  With these new proceeds, I invite Flexo to be our newest member.  His selection is Flextronics (FLEX), a vertically integrated electronics manufacture based in Singapore.  Welcome aboard!  (Click TSF link for updated chart.)

Week In Review: Gotta say, it was fun auditioning for Cosmopolitan Magazine with “How To Get Your Super Motivated Boyfriend To Marry You“.  The post turned off some women, found support from other women, while speaking to some fellas as you can see in the comments.  Of course, when the guys went back and asked how their girlfriends felt, they all disagreed.  After the 5th year of dating, have a read again and share your thoughts.

Every guy has some degree of SMB in them.  It’s not possible to always feel secure, never have any pressure, and marry the girlfriend by year two.  The 50/50 equal effort split is also just a pipe dream.  Someone will always feel more affection than the other.  Persecuted men out there, this one’s for you!  Helping ladies help men so men can help ladies sounds like a win-win scenario.

Rest of the Month: We’re going to slowly blend back into more personal finance related topics.  I’m happy to present a couple more guest posts, and at least one more book review and giveaway to readers.  As part of the Yakezie Alexa Challenge, I will continue highlighting your work here and on Twitter.  Perhaps you will do the same.

HIGHLIGHT POSTS OF THE WEEK Read more…

A Sliced Heart

With Valentine’s Day coming up, I thought it’d be nice to dedicate some of this week’s posts to relationships.  Few things are as rewarding as finding the one you want to grow old with.  I can be stranded somewhere in Kabul, and so long as the one is beside me, I am happy.

That said, does true love have a price?  If a genie gave you the option of having $100 million dollars but never finding the love of your life, or finding that special someone but always living just above the poverty line, which would you choose?

Before answering the question, think about all the fun times you had in your prior relationships, some that could have been.  Not all bad right?  Now think carefully whether after a certain point, more money can really bring you more happiness.

My theory is that “love” will be the landslide victor, however, at the margin men will have a greater tendency to choose money over love, while women will gravitate towards love over money.

The Samurai Fund: -3.13% YTD vs. the S&P 500 -4.4%. Lenar +15%, Berkshire +11%, GE +4% and STE +6.15% continue to be stars. While MWW -18% and Toyota -11.3% are the biggest dogs.  If Toyoda-san didn’t apologize on Friday, I would have sold the stock in a heart beat.

Samurai’s Alexa Ranking Challenge: Is growing strong!  I’m very happy to see so many people progress and support each other.  Forget about all about SEO, link ratios, and yourself.  Keep up the content and the promoting of others!  If you would like to join, read the post, let us know in the comments section with your rank so Daniel-san and I can track.

HIGHLIGHT POSTS OF THE WEEK Read more…

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…

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 Yakezie Alexa Challenge

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 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…

Was there ever a time when you thought you had to do more just to get noticed?  You’d put on antics, pretend to be someone you’re not, and self praise one too many times when all you had to do was just be yourself.

I want to share with you my favorite Glee (FOX) video, which begins just after the Glee cast performed a wild, hair wig routine for the opposing team. The video reminds us that simplicity, accompanied by genuineness triumphs always.

This site won’t be all things to all people.  If it was, we’d lose our authenticity.  Thanks for joining our community so far and happy Martin Luther King Day.  Let’s remember what he stands for!

Readers, ever catch yourself doing something that wasn’t you?  Why do you think you were doing that unusual thing, and why is it so hard to just be ourselves sometimes?

Keigu,

Sam Samurai – “Slicing Through Money’s Mysteries”

Follow on Twitter @FinancialSamura and subscribe to our RSS Feed.

PS: You can watch the entire episode of “Hairography” here.  Once you juxtapose the two performances (29min mark), you may appreciate the short clip even more.

So far over $7 million has been raised to help Haiti by just texting the word “HAITI” to 90999.  You’ll get a confirm receipt from your mobile carrier once sent.  Please consider donating!

This week on Financial Samurai, we’ll share our thoughts on the latest government rhetoric, highlight a guest post by Flexo, introduce a new fun challenge, and perhaps discuss one of the key things to consider for job seekers.

THE SAMURAI FUND UPDATE: +3.85% vs. S&P 500 +1.88% as of Friday, Jan 15th. 203 basis points of outperform puts us in the Top Tier of all funds.

Stars: Lenar +25%, Toyota +8%, GE 9%, Harmon +7.4%,, Calgon +7%, Big Lots +7%.

Dog Poops: Lumber Liquidators -7%, Berkshire -1.6%, Steris -1.25%, ABM -1%, Monsanto -1%.

Looks like there’s some good demand from new entrants, and investors who want to give us several hundred million more to build new positions!  Contributors, please provide an update on your name in the TSF page above, especially if your name is sucking wind.  Will be making room for new names in February.

SAMURAI WEEK IN REVIEW

* People now realize that converting to a ROTH IRA is pretty ridiculous as Kevin M reminds us that the first $18,700 (equivalent to $470,000 in pre-tax funds at 4%) you withdraw from your retirement funds is tax free.  Meanwhile, JoeTaxPayer highlights that if you retire with $2.17 million in today’s dollars, you only have to pay 15% tax!  You’ll have to retire with more than $5 million dollars to average a 25% tax rate, based off a 4% income return.  $5 million is only 50X your $100,000 “average” income.  Always good to dream big for those of you who’ve justified your ROTH IRA contributions.  Joe, you made my day!

* Family seems to be the number one reason why people choose to freeze during the winter, and melt during the summer.  FYI, it is possible to make friends in paradise folks.  It’s also possible for your family to fly out and visit you on the beach.  If you’re miserable, don’t limit yourself!  Just think about how much easier it is to travel now vs. 300 years ago.

* The “Get Financially Naked” book giveaway ends on Saturday, January 23rd.  It’s a great little book for couples who feel they need some help in improving their communication as it relates to finance.  With all our book giveaways, we’d like to share them with those who’d like and need them the most.

* Americans really shouldn’t complain about our finances since we’re wealthier than 99% of the rest of the world.  That said, it’s all relative, and if everybody is wealthy, then it’s really hard to feel special.  The key seems to be to amass your wealth, and move elsewhere!

Keigu,

Sam Samurai – “Slicing Through Money’s Mysteries”

Follow on Twitter @FinancialSamurai and subscribe to our RSS Feed.