Over at Brip Blap, Steve gave his advice towards investing. In the post he mentions that you should set up your investments and then forget about them. I want to go a little more in depth on how important that “forget about it” aspect is. If you are like me, you invest in index funds and ETFs and hold them for the long term. This has been the proven way to succeed in the market. If the buy and hold philosophy is the way that you invest, my best advice is to really forget about your investments.

Don’t check your portfolio daily.
When I first started investing I bought in to some stocks and checked them every hour. I would literally have a separate window open on my computer twenty four hours a day. I was obsessed with what the market was doing. Every time one of my stocks made the slightest dip, I panicked. I would get overly nervous every time it would move down one cent and I would jump for joy every time it would move up just one cent. It was crazy. For your own sanity’s sake, don’t check your portfolio too often. If you are in it for the long run, the day to day dips and peaks don’t really matter.

Checking too often leads to bad decisions.
I’ve made quite a few mistakes in the short amount of time that I’ve been investing. Most of these mistakes have been a result of panic selling. When you are constantly watching the market, hour by hour, you’ll be more inclined to panic at a slight dip and prematurely sell. I’ve had investments that I held for less than a week because in the first few days they dipped down a little. Of course right after I sold them, they would recover from the loss and if I would have held out, I probably would have made some money. Avoid the bad decisions that can be made. Keep clear of that stock ticker on a day to day basis.

Ignore what the media says about the market.
You are constantly hearing on the news that the DOW did this or the NASDAQ did that. You’ll hear about the fed lowering or raising the interest rates. None of this information should affect you if you are holding for the long term. Ignore what the media has to say about the market. Don’t let what the media says drive you in to a panic sell.

If you can have the discipline to invest in a safe fund and it ignore it for years and years, you will be a success at investing. The greatest thing for your investments is time. Take emotions out of investing and do what has worked for years and years. Buy, hold and ignore.

Photo Credit: rednuht

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I was talking to my dad the other day about our company and the way things were going over the last few years. With the economy the way it is, we’ve had some rough patches. Somewhere in the conversation he brought up a poem that he had heard that really struck a chord with me. The poem is about a person writing the autobiography of their life in five short chapters. I couldn’t remember the entire thing so I scoured the internet, looking for the poem. I wanted to make sure that if I repeated it, it was accurate.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson

I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost … I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place
but, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V
I walk down another street.

This poem holds a very valuable lesson.
This can be pretty much a metaphor for almost anything you do in life. You make a mistake once and you feel really bad, you make the same mistake again and just can’t understand it. At some point you must come to the realization that you need to take another path to avoid the same mistakes.

Take investing for example.
I made a huge mistake in the stock market when I was first getting in to it. I dabbled in penny stocks a little. I invested a lot of money in a stock that traded for less than one dollar per share based on a tip in a message board. Based on the theme of this post, it’s not hard to imagine what happened next. The company went bankrupt. Penny stocks are like gambling in a casino. I had to make my money back. I invested in a different penny stock, thinking that I could make all my money back and more. How could I be so stupid and make the same mistake twice? I learned from it and have never as much as looked at a quote for a penny stock since.

This advice holds true in almost anything in life.
The people in this world that are the most successful have gotten there by making many mistakes. The only way that you can really learn that some paths shouldn’t be taken is by traveling them yourself and experiencing it first hand.

I am really interested in hearing other’s interpretations of the poem. I’d also love to hear stories of people making the same mistakes repeatedly but eventually finding their way around it.

Photo Credit: Helga’s Lobster Stew

This is a question that many people ask. Should I take the money from my bank account and pay off my debt with it or take it and save it in my savings account earning 4-5%? My answer to this question is that it depends on the interest rate of your debt. If you carry a balance on a credit card that is getting an interest rate of 17%, you are much better off paying the balance of your credit card than you are investing the savings. It is basically like getting 17% interest on your money guaranteed. On the other hand, if you have an ultra-low interest rate of something like 3%, you are probably better off paying down the balance monthly and earning interest on your savings.

Let’s look at some numbers to get a little more in depth:

I have $10,000 in credit card debt. My credit card has an interest rate of 16%. I have $10,000 in the bank right now. Is it better to take my $10,000 and completely pay of my credit card or take that $10,000 and invest it?

If I take the $10,000 and pay off my debt, I will save myself $10,101.57 in interest payments over a ten year period.

If I take the $10,000 and put it in a savings account that earns 5% (My current savings account) and don’t touch it for ten years, I will gain $6,288.95 over that 10 years.

Clearly, it is better to pay off my credit card. I would have netted a loss of $3,812.62 over that ten year period.

Let’s start over with a 3% Interest Loan:

I have $10,000 in student loan debt. My loan has an interest rate of 3%. I have $10,000 in the bank right now. Is it better to take my $10,000 and completely pay of my student loan or take that $10,000 and invest it?

If I take the $10,000 and pay off my debt, I will save myself $1,587.29 in interest payments over a ten year period.

If I take the $10,000 and put it in that savings account that earns 5% and don’t touch it for ten years, I will gain $6,288.95 over that 10 years.

In this case, I come out ahead after 10 years by an amount of $4,701.66 by slowly paying down my student loan but investing that $10,000 in the beginning.

I really want to touch on this subject a lot more. It’s actually something that I’m just starting to learn a lot about myself. I really do hold some debt between my truck payment and my credit cards. I’m still investigating my best course of action to get them paid off and to invest my money. There are a lot more details that go in to the analysis of whether investing or paying off debt is the better solution. I’m using all these complex calculators that I’m finding on various sites and really trying to understand what they all mean. I promise I will follow up with further analysis soon. One of the great things about this blog is that it is really forcing me to learn this stuff.

Feel free to comment and/or point out flaws in my (basic) analysis.

-M

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There is one investment out there that you absolutely must make. I’ve never heard of a single financial adviser or investment guru that will tell you any different. In fact, I even have a personal story that just solidifies this statement. Health Insurance is the one investment that everyone needs to have. There is no arguing with this statement.

I have this uncle who makes great money, has a great job and has very little expenses. He’s not married and lives in a two bedroom apartment. He was doing just fine. In fact, he was probably living a much higher standard of living than most people, seeing as he had low expenses and such a high paying job. He was in a great place in his life. He’s somewhat of a tightwad, however. That’s just how he was brought up. Unfortunately, he didn’t really know the difference between being frugal and being cheap. He wanted to save money wherever possible. The biggest mistake he’s made in his entire life was deciding to skip out on paying for health insurance.

One day, while out at a clients house, my uncle’s partner called my mom. He told us that he just wasn’t acting right. My uncle kept forgetting where he was and asking the same questions multiple times. Something really strange was going on with him. We really didn’t think much of it that day. The following day we received a call claiming that my uncle had not yet arrived at work. He was already an hour late. My mom made a call to my uncle to discover that he was sitting in the parking lot of his previous employer. Now we knew that something was definitely wrong. We told him to come over to our shop, which was less than a mile down the road, and he agreed to head this way. About an hour had passed and he still had not arrived. Once again, we called him on his cell phone to learn that he was completely lost. We told him to pull over on the side of the road, tell us what street he was on, and we would come pick him up. Luckily for us, he was in sound enough mind to do this.

We rushed him to the emergency room to get checked out and on the entire drive he kept asking where he was and what was going on. It was really strange and scary. After arriving at the hospital, they rushed him to get a cat scan. He had a brain tumor. We were told that if he had gone one more day with this, he may not have woken up. Luckily, the tumor was not malignant. They were able to place a shunt and, to this day, he’s been back to normal. That is to say, he’s been back to normal mentally. Financially… That’s a different story.

This uncle opted out of health insurance. Once all was said and done, he owed the hospital about $100,000. He was living well but he definitely didn’t have that kind of money. His family tried to help out as much as possible but to this day, he’s still paying for it. I can understand that it may be hard to justify paying for something when you’re not seeing the benefits but when that day comes that you really need it, it can completely wipe you out. My uncle could be paying for this for the rest of his life. The really unfortunate part is, now that he’s had preexisting problems, he’s having a hard time getting health insurance. He still, to this day, does not have any.

Don’t make the same mistake as my uncle. Invest in some good health insurance. If that day ever comes along where you really need it, you will be so thankful that you had.

-M

The short answer to this question: As early as possible.

The slightly longer answer. (Well, actually it’s more like statistics.):
If you start investing about $19 per week at age 25 and earn an 8% annual return on that investment then decide to completely stop putting money into that account at age 34, you would have invested around $10,000 over that 10 year period. Without adding another cent to that account, by age 65, your funds would have grown to about $168,600. On the other hand, if you were to start investing at age 35 and put $1,000 in the account every single year until you turned 65, you would have invested $30,000 and you would be retiring with only about $125,000.

If you are reading this right now and you don’t have some sort of plan for retirement, start now. Invest in a tax sheltered account such as an IRA. Social Security is close to the point where the government will be paying out more than it’s taking in. You need to rely on your own retirement strategies and not what the government might provide in the future.

One way to look at retirement is that you are saving up to buy it. Think about it. When you want to go on a nice vacation, you save up to buy it or when you buy a home you need to save to buy that. The most expensive thing you will purchase in your lifetime is your retirement. You need to save up to buy that time, free of working. It’s getting harder and harder for people to have a comfortable retirement these days because people are living longer and the effects of inflation are lowering the value of our money. So think about retirement as putting away money every month to save to buy that freedom later on in life. Invest under a tax shelter in index funds and start as early as possible.

-M

Richard Wrote:

1) The amount you save each year for retirement does not exceed the amount necessary for full 401(k) employer match. I have decided calculated that I can save X percent each year for retirement. Since my employer matches 25% for that X percent, I would be losing out on an instant gain of 25% (not to mention that it otherwise would be after tax dollars) by putting the money into the Roth.

Whenever I have discussed this with friends, they say that if I’m only contributing up to their match, then I’m not contributing enough. To this I respond that my employeer (though this is rare) will match 25% on up to the government limit (15,500). So my X is actually a pretty hefty sum.

2) The other money I am saving (like for a downpayment) is for short term goals. For this reason I invest the money in an ING account. Although I could invest this money in an ROTH and pull it out when I need the house, what if the stock market drops right before I decide to buy this house. The one thing people neglect to mention about ROTHs is that although you can pull out your contributions, you can’t do that if the value of the account is below what you’ve put in. With my ING account I’m guarenteed (FDIC) to have the money I’ve put in.

I believe Richard makes some very valid points. In response to #1, I agree that if you have an employer matched 401K, you should definitely take advantage of that. A lot of employers do not offer this sort of benefit. I do believe, however, that a Roth IRA can be beneficial on top of the 401K. The downside of a 401K plan is that the tax is deferred and must be paid once you withdraw. With a Roth, you are paying income taxes before investing and you are not required to pay taxes on your capital gains. A lot of companies limit what you can invest in with your 401K funds as well. With a Roth IRA, you are limited only to what your broker provides. You can allocate your assets differently between the two.

As far as a response to your second comment, I do agree that a Roth IRA is not the best plan for saving for house. The point that I was trying to make is that those funds aren’t untouchable if you absolutely need to use them for a down payment. When purchasing a house, you are much better off coming up with a down payment without touching your retirement accounts. But your IRA is there if necessary.

-M

Wealthy

1. Andy Beard -Search Engine Performance, Wordpress, Niche Marketing and Affiliate Marketing Tips
2. Blogging Away Debt – A great site about making money and reducing debt
3. Blue Hat SEO – Tips for marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
4. Blueprint for Financial Prosperity – Earn More, Save More, Live More
5. Boston Girl’s Open Wallet – A single 30-something Bostonian who is seeking enlightenment and control of her Net Worth.
6. Calvin Warr – Fun marketing ideas
7. Clever Dude – Personal finance advice.
8. Consumerism Commentary – More personal finance advice.
9. Copyblogger – Copywriting tips for online marketing success
10. Daily Blog Tips – Another great site that will help you make money blogging.
11. DoshDosh – Helping You Make Money Online
12. Entrepreneurs Journey – Another great site about building wealth through blogging.
13. Finance is Personal – Finance advice posting about 3 times a day. Always fresh material.
14. FiveCentNickel – More personal finance advice.
15. FreeMoneyFinance – Another great site for personal finance advice.
16. Frugal For Life – A site about frugality and spending wisely.
17. Get Rich Slowly – Some more great business and finance advice from a fellow business owner.
18. Hannes Johnson Dot Com – Make money online marketing on the internet.
19. Home Based Business – Online home based business opportunities. Free home business ideas.
20. I Will Teach You To Be Rich – Follow his advice and he may make you rich. (The first finance blog I started reading)
21. It’s Your Money – A Site about wealth building and personal finance.
22. John Chow – This guy wants to teach you how monetize your blog (By any means necessary).
23. Kyle’s Cove – Technology, blogging, WordPress, SEO, and making money online
24. Lazy Man and Money – Another great site for more personal finance advice.
25. Make Money Online The Quick and Easy Way – Watch the journey of one women going from stay at home mom to internet millionaire.
26. Matt Cuts – Great SEO information
27. Mighty Bargain Hunter – A site about being frugal.
28. Money, Matters and More Musings – Another great site about wealth building and personal finance.
29. MsDanielle – Internet Marketing, PPC, and Online Social Networking
30. My Affiliate Journey – Affiliate marketing
31. My Money Blog – A great site about wealth building and personal finance.
32. My Personal Finance Journey – Another really good site about wealth building and personal finance.
33. My Two Dollars – A place to discuss money for the rest of us.
34. North x East – A site with a lot of blogging tips.
35. Not Made of Money -A Site about saving money and frugality.
36. One Man’s Goal – Watch one man make the journey to become a full time blogger.
37. Online Marketing Blog – A blog about online marketing.
38. Personal Finance Advice – The name says it all.
39. ProBlogger – Want to make money blogging? This site can teach you how.
40. Pronet Advertising – Read about one man’s experiences in online marketing.
41. QuickSprout – Tips for marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
42. Search Engine Land – Learn about Search Engines.
43. ShoeMoney – Another site with ideas on making money on the internet.
44. Simply Thrifty – A site about being frugal.
45. StockTradingToGo – A great resources for investing tips.
46. The Digerati Life – Personal finance advice from a great writer.
47. The Simple Dollar – All sorts of personal finance advice.
48. Young and Broke – More personal finance advice.

Healthy

49. DietHack – A great site for health related articles.
50. FatBlokeThin – Losing weight the Buddhist way.
51. HealthMad – More tips to live healthy by many authors.
52. Healthy, Fast and Cheap – A site about cooking foods that are healthy, fast and cheap.
53. Her Active Life – A great site about eating healthy and excersize (great tips for men and women).
54. He’s Fit – A great site about eating healthy and excersize (great tips for men and women).
55. Live Live… Organics & Your Health – A great site with tips on healthy living.
56. Nurture Your Life – Another great site with tips on healthy living
57. Raising a Healthy Family – The name says it all.
58. Ririan Project – Tons of great tips to live a healthier lifestyle.
59. Sexual Health Buzz – A site about staying healthy while being sexually active.
60. Spine-Health – For those people who suffer from neck and back pain (Like I often do).
61. The Diet Pulpit – Eat healthy.
62. The Final Sprint – A great health site with a major focus on running.
63. Total Wellbeing – Healthy living for the body and mind.

Happy

64. 43 Folders – Personal productivity and ways to make your life better.
65. Brip Blap – A blog about life, family, career, personal finance, career, productivity, health and the environment.
66. Dumb Little Man – A group blog of people giving tips for anything and everything.
67. Genius Types – Creative Life and Money.
68. LifeHack – Another Site about pretty litterally, everything.
69. LifeHacker – Literally, A site about everything.
70. Pick the Brain – A great site about self improvement.
71. Scott H. Young – Another great site about self improvement.
72. Steve Pavlina – Personal development for smart people.
73. The Blog of Author Tim Ferris – A great site with tons of advice about everything.
74. The Consumerist – A Site about everything to make life better.
75. The Happiness Project – The name says it all.
76. The Positivity Blog – Be happy and be positive. Great Advice.
77. The Thinking Blog – Expand Your Mind.
78. ZenHabits – A site about organizing your life and becoming a happier person.

That’s my long, comprehensive reading list. As you can see, I read a lot of blogs. Feel free to comment on who else deserves to be on the list and what not. Check out these blogs and enjoy!

-M

So you’ve got that job and you’ve got an income flowing. Now you even have a Roth IRA with a good Index Fund. It’s time to open a discretionary investment account. This is an account where you put your money and invest it in whatever you want. Here you can deposit money and withdraw it as you please. Keep in mind, though, you will get taxed on your income before investing and you will get taxed on the interest you’ve made once you realize your capital gains. This account is for the money you aren’t putting in your Roth. You can only invest so much per year in to that so this is where you put your money that you want to invest once you’ve already made your Roth contributions. Lately, I’ve been looking at a company called Zecco. They seem to be a real great choice for a discretionary account because they have basically no fees for simply trading stocks.

I’m not one to give stock tips on any individual stock. In fact, I actually think it’s pretty foolish to go and invest in stocks because of a tips from a website or a friend or even a TV show for that matter. The only way to trade stocks is to do your own research. Read books on analysis and investigate the companies that you want to own. My personal strategy for investing in individual stocks can be found here.

Now that you’ve come this far, it’s time to move on to Step 4: Adopt a more frugal lifestyle.

I think the importance of a Roth IRA and how I feel about them has been stressed quite a bit here at this site. I wrote “No Reason not to have a Roth IRA” and Joe wrote “More on Roth IRAs: Just Starting Out“. I think I’ve just decided that I can’t talk enough about this tool. It is such a great way to earn capital gains and actually keep your share of it. Sure, you’ll pay taxes before you make your contributions but from then on, everything is all yours! It’s like giving the finger to the man. Well, maybe not, but still it’s one of the few loopholes that the IRS is gonna give you. I think the reason I like them so much is that it makes it hard to pull money from the investment. You put the money in and you can’t touch any of those gains to go out and buy something stupid that you don’t need. Those gains are there for what’s really important; a home or retirement.

So I figure I’ve spoken enough (for today) on why I like a Roth IRA but I haven’t given much input on what to do with an IRA once you’ve got it set up. The best way to get the most out of your IRA is to max it out every year. Every year you can contribute $4,000 to it. I suggest setting up an automatic investment plan. I like having the money automatically withdrawn from my bank account each month. If you take $4,000 and split it up among twelve months, it figures to be about $333.33 per month. Or if you’d prefer, some investment brokers will allow you to have the money withdrawn on a weekly basis. In that case it would figure to about $77 a week.

So once you have your investment schedule set up and you’ve got money pumping in to your IRA, what do you invest in? Well personally, for an IRA, I like index funds. No Load Index funds to be more specific.

Here’s what I like

• The Vangaurd 500 Index (VFINX)
  This fund follows the performance of the S&P 500 index. The S&P 500 tracks 500 large capitalization companies in the U.S.. Over history, the S&P 500 averages gains of about 10% per year. Over the last 5 years, this index has returned at a rate of about 12% to its investors.
• The Vangaurd Total Stock Market Index (VTSMX)
  This is a fund that tracks the performance of the entire stock market. This is another fund that you can probably expect to average about 10% per year over the life of your holding.
• The Vangaurd Small Cap Index (NAESX)
  This fund tracks MSCI US Small Cap 1750 Index. The Small Cap Index is comprised of 1,750 smaller U.S. companies. This is a riskier index fund. By that, I mean that the years this fund is down, it will probably be a lot farther down than the safer investments. On the other hand, the years that this fund is up, you will be seeing much higher returns than the safer funds. This fund, over the last 5 years, has averaged about 17% for its investors.
• The Vangaurd Total International Stock Index (VGTSX)
  This fund follows companies in Europe, The Pacific Region, and emerging markets. Like the last one, it’s a bit higher risk but has returned an average of 20% over the last 5 years.

As you can see, I am a fan of Vangaurd Funds and those are my picks to hold in an IRA account. Obviously you can not purchase all of them and there are some minimum balance requirements. But do some research in to those because I think they are all pretty safe bets over the long haul.

Now go get that IRA started and then move on to Step 3: Setting Up a Discretionary Investment Account.

1. Get a job that you don’t hate.
   I’m pretty much at this point right now. There are days that are stressful and I just want punch a wall and go home and cry. (I never do though… At least not the wall punching thing). That’s pretty much to be said with any job though. I’ve never actually known anyone to say that they absolutely love their job and there is never any stress involved but for the most part, you’ve got to be doing something that does not make you miserable. I’m making descent money and for the most part I’m happy. Consider this goal accomplished…
2. Open a Roth IRA and invest the maximum each year.
   I’ve already explained why there is no reason not to have a Roth IRA and then Joe elaborated on the topic. Max this out every year. Invest in index funds that have been proven to be consistent gainers. If you absolutely need to, you are allowed to pull your contributions out and you can even pull some capital gains out if you are using it for a house, school or an emergency. I just recently set up my Roth but I haven’t quite contributed the max yet for this year… I’m well on my way with this one…
3. Open a discretionary investment account.
   You can only put so much money in to a Roth IRA each year. I love investing and I think it’s a good idea to have a discretionary account in which you can add and pull money from as you please. I like to use this account for trading individual stocks. I wrote an article on my investing technique. Some people might say that it’s trying to time the market but, so far, for me, it’s been a great way to tell when to get in to a stock. From then on out, I tend to hold for a while. I personally have a Scottrade account but I think it’s about to go bye bye. I’m currently looking in to setting up an account at Zecco.com because they offer free trades. Scottrade is too slow and it seems to be sort of difficult to pull my money from the brokerage. Besides, how can you beat $0 trades? I’m well under way with this goal as well.
4. Adopt a more frugal lifestyle.
   Some people get frugal and cheap confused. Ramit over at “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” describes cheap people as people who care about the cost of something while frugal people are people who care about the value of something. Buy what you need and shop smart. I am working on this one.
5. Start a blog and take steps to monetize.
   I guess my ultimate goal with the whole blogging thing is to make enough money with it that it covers one of my monthly bills. It would be so nice if I could some day say that my rent payment was covered by my blog. I still think I’m a little off from that goal though. Does anybody know of a place I can rent for $10 a month?
6. De-clutter my life and sell what might be valuable.
   I read a post over at Get Rich Slowly called “The Frugal Collector: 10 Ways to Curb the Habit“. It really made me think about how much I have and how much I can probably get rid of. When I was younger I used to collect comic books. I have hundreds and hundreds. Some are probably worth something too. I’ve decided that one of these weekends, I’m just going to go through all my collections and see if anything is of any value and try to sell whatever I don’t want. I have comic books, dvds, cds, books, computer software and various little gadgets that I probably haven’t touched in years. I can probably make a little bit of money with these and, if I’m lucky, pay down my truck a little. I’m done with hording things. I’m going to stop buying the things that aren’t necessary and started getting rid of the things I don’t need.
7. Start my own business.
   I have so many ideas for different businesses some of them brick and mortar some of them online. I hope to get at least one of them started within the next couple months. This will most likely be the online business because it requires much less start up capital. I just want to have a job where I can set my own schedule and my wages are only determined by what I can do. Then when I’m ready to retire, I can sell all the businesses I’ve created. If you’ve ever read The E-Myth, Michael Gerber explains that when owning a businesses, always have the mindset that you are building it to sell it. Can’t quite say that I’ve accomplished this goal, but I will…
8. Buy a home.
   Finally, I want to own a home. This is not my first goal though. I want to achieve all my other goals first. I want to make sure that when I purchase a home, I can do it comfortably. I know that when my parents bought their first home they had no idea how they were going to pay for it. I want to have a plan and I want all my debts to be paid off. I want to know that my blog or my online business is covering my mortgage payment every month. Mark this goal as still pretty far in the future…

Those are my steps. I’m constantly reading blogs and new books so I may have to add new steps and new good ideas. But as of now, that is my financial goal set. Feel free to comment.

-M