Archive for March, 2005
Warren Buffet, the 2nd richest man on the planet, released his annual letter to shareholders over the weekend. He apologized for the fact that this was the second year in a row that his company, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA), has lagged the S&P 500 Index. He has openly said in the past that it will be very hard for a company of Berkshire’s size to beat the S&P 500 by very much, especially of you buy a low-cost index fund like Vanguard’s VFINX. Of course, he is a very humble man. Over the past 40 years, Berkshire has grown its book value per share at an annualized rate of 21.9%. That’s more than twice the S&P 500’s 10.4% annualized return in that time.
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Posted in Investing | 5 Comments »
I just finished replacing all of my 60-watt regular incandescent light bulbs in my place with the equivalent 11-watt fluorescent ones. I had been waiting for each to burn out one-by-one, but after finding a bunch on sale at Ikea I just decided to do them all. After crunching some numbers, it seems like that would be the best decision anyways. Here are my calculations:
10 bulbs x ~4 hours a day x 1 year = 14,600 hours of lighting.
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Posted in Frugal Living | No Comments »
I just finished replacing all of my 60-watt regular incandescent light bulbs in my place with the equivalent 11-watt fluorescent ones. I had been waiting for each to burn out one-by-one, but after finding a bunch on sale at Ikea I just decided to do them all. After crunching some numbers, it seems like that would be the best decision anyways. Here are my calculations:
10 bulbs x ~4 hours a day x 1 year = 14,600 hours of lighting.
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Frugal Living | 4 Comments »
I wanted to extend a warm welcome this beautiful Sunday morning to all my visitors. I’ve gotten a noticeable increase in comments and visitors recently, most likely due to recent mentions at BusinessWeek.com, WallStreet Journal Online (link good until Thursday for non-subscribers), and Russ Beattie’s Notebook. I hope everyone can get something from my ramblings, and I encourage people to share their comments!
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
Here are the results from the Deals & Offers I have posted recently (see last month’s entry here). As usual, I try to only post the offers that I think are good enough to apply for myself:
Free Golf Balls from American Century Investments - Got the golf balls and prospectuses within 3 days. Nice! Not a bad company, but I still think I’d stick with T. Rowe Price for actively-managed mutual funds. Better management in my opinion and lower expenses.
Best of 0% Balance Transfer Offers - I already have both Citibank cards, and I recently cancelled the American Express one since I didn’t like the rewards program. Free money with no interest!
Free Financial Preparation Kit - Downloaded, printed-out, and… I still haven’t filled it out. Ugh, paperwork. Very good idea to do though.
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Posted in Deals & Offers | No Comments »
Here are the results from the Deals & Offers I have posted recently (see last month’s entry here). As usual, I try to only post the offers that I think are good enough to apply for myself:
Free Golf Balls from American Century Investments - Got the golf balls and prospectuses within 3 days. Nice! Not a bad company, but I still think I’d stick with T. Rowe Price for actively-managed mutual funds. Better management in my opinion and lower expenses.
Best of 0% Balance Transfer Offers - I already have both Citibank cards, and I recently cancelled the American Express one since I didn’t like the rewards program. Free money with no interest!
Free Financial Preparation Kit - Downloaded, printed-out, and… I still haven’t filled it out. Ugh, paperwork. Very good idea to do though.
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Deals & Offers | 1 Comment »
From 9 am to 6pm Eastern today, you can call 888-919-2345 and get free answers to all your investment and retirement questions from a professional financial advisor. Sponsored by NAPFA, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, a group of fee-only financial advisors which don’t work on commission, which helps remove much of the conflict of interest in financial “advisors”, some of which are closer to car salesmen than anything else.
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Posted in Deals & Offers | 1 Comment »
I was having lunch with some co-workers recently, and an older co-worker was talking about taking a loan from his 401k plan to help with a downpayment on a new house (an interesting idea for a future post). To my surprise, two of my other coworkers with me, who started work the same time as I, replied “401k? We’re not even enrolled.”. I was totally stunned. I mean, these guys are within a year or two of my age, single, and one of them even lives at home! We’ve all been working at least two years, so even with student loans there’s no way they can’t afford to save some of their current income.
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Posted in Retirement | 6 Comments »
