Most professionals recommend you only check your statements once or twice a year to balance them. Checking them too frequently might cause you to do stupid things, like sell your stocks when the market is down and buy them when the market is high. You can’t be emotional when investing, and when you check your portfolio too [...]

Posted in Finances, Investment 3 Comments »

When I joined my current company, I simply rolled over the funds from my previous company’s 401k into the new one’s.
Big mistake.
I did that before checking what investment choices were available in the plan. At the time I thought that all 401k plans were “good” plans.
After looking at my funds more carefully, I noticed one thing: [...]

Posted in Investment 3 Comments »

There’s a very interesting article from John Mauldin at investor insight.
I’m going to be honest. I didn’t understand 100% of what he said, but even without all the details, I could better understand what happened to the market and how it was affected by the problems with the subprime loans and how it affected even [...]

Posted in Finances, Investment 2 Comments »

I have a friend/roommate that lives with us and pays me $600/mo to help out. It’s a good deal for her, because I don’t charge anything else, and she enjoys all the benefits that we do. The $600 pretty much covers my HOA and the utilities. Not really financially worth it for me to give [...]

Posted in Finances, Investment No Comments »

I wouldn’t suggest anyone do this. You need an emergency fund and you shouldn’t touch it unless it’s a true emergency. A pair of designer shoes on sale is NOT an emergency.
Easier said than done.
I’ve been putting money in the market these past few weeks.
Given the plunge these past 2 days and the great recovery [...]

Posted in Finances, Investment 3 Comments »

I tried, but couldn’t resist. The market has been tumbling these past days and I couldn’t resist, but jump in.
I sold one of my old positions (since 2002) that wasn’t really performing that well and I wasn’t seeing a bright future for it (Nortel - NT).
I used that money and added some more fresh money [...]

Posted in Finances, Investment 2 Comments »

I went through an exercise of researching some mutual funds and building a “Target Portfolio”.
Why go through this exercise? My current investments are way too risky. Over 50% of my mutual funds are international funds. And that’s not including some ETFs and ADRs I have. So I decided to build a more balanced portfolio.

It will probably [...]

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To be honest, I can’t remember the reason I bought FSDAX. It’s a mutual fund focused in Defense. I guess with the war going on and rumors of invading Syria or Iran, I thought it could do well.
Anyways, this week I decided to let it go and switched the funds to DODFX, another international mutual [...]

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