What I Wish I Did Before I Got a Mortgage, Pt. 1
on Sep 15, 2009 in mortgage The most important thing I didn't do properly was to remember that I get paid twice a month. I was budgeting my income on a monthly basis, which works out great when you don't have a mortgage, but badly, when mortgage goes right out your bank account...

Need to post more frequently
on Aug 23, 2009All the recent activity with people reading and commenting on my prior post about the fraud perpetuated by the Google Money Machine people has guilted me back to blogging. I took a break for a while because work was burning me out, and frankly, I was...

Long time
on Jun 23, 2009 in mortgage Time to catch up. Big NEWS!On contract for a house, closing July 31st. Going to set me back about $210K and I've been scrambling to get inspections, mortgages, and lawyers.Recent economic improvement and then subsequent further news about declines ha...

Networth Update
on May 31, 2009 in networth budget Wow, looking back, it's been a good two months since I've posted a networth update.On the whole, things are going pretty well. Now that the stock market is back, my investment account and 401(k) are both steadily rising, while no new major expenditur...

Is the dead cat bouncing?
on May 13, 2009As I blogged before, there's plenty of belief out there that the last month's worth of bounceback in the stock market is just a momentary uptick during an otherwise downward trend.One big economic statistic driving the market down today was the relea...

Up day counter to bad news
on Apr 29, 2009 in fomc economy Investors seem unmoved by news of the swine flu pandemic and worse than expected GDP news released this morning.Sentiment seems to have shifted to the positive, as everyone believes we have hit or are close to market bottoms, especially after success...

New Credit Card Rules
on Apr 23, 2009 in credit cards Finally, our elected leaders are doing something that should help the average consumer, passing new rules on credit cards.Yesterday, the House Financial Services Committee approved new (although borrowed heavily from previously released Fed Reserve g...

Going positive
on Apr 19, 2009We're past tax day. People are done dumping teabags and complaining about high tax rates that a majority of Americans don't actually pay.The stock market ended up last week, and a significant part of the financials reported positive earnings.Come on...

Profit taking
on Apr 14, 2009Looks like the markets did some profit taking today, ahead of possible volatile earnings from banks. I personally thought it was a good time to bull into financials at near-term lows. I think after the bailouts, TARP, and new FASB rules, banks should...

Dead Cat Bounce?
on Apr 7, 2009 in stock market fasb Wall Street traders like to give names to everything, and this week, the phrase has been "dead cat bounce". As the saying goes, even a dead cat bounces when it hits the pavement. It is a reference to a phenomenon that as stocks tank, there are times...