Archive for June, 2007

Priceline works great!

Published at June 24, 2007 in Daily. 0 Comments
Hyatt Regency
The Hyatt that we stayed at
Photo by my wife

My wife, ever the frugal shopper, got a great rate on the Hyatt Regency in Newport Beach for our little weekend vacation. Normally the room rate was around $250 a night, but through Priceline we got the room for $90, and after taxes, fees and such it came out to about $117 total. That is a great 50% off!

All told our vacation cost us a little over $300 including the hotel, gas, food, etc. Not bad for a little weekend at the beach huh? So our piggy bank savings didn’t cover all of the expenses, it did cover almost half of it. Amazing what a little pocket change here and there can do for you.

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Apple recovering nice and steady

Published at June 19, 2007 in Stocks. 0 Comments

My Apple stock is now at a nice 7.94% gain, pretty much back to where it was before it dived a few percentage points last week. Even better news however is that my National-Oilwell Varco stock is now a really nice 18.18% gain.

Average gain per trade year to date: 3.04%

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What a day for my stocks

Published at June 15, 2007 in Stocks. 0 Comments

stock chartWell today has continued the interesting trend with my two stocks. Apple is still down, leaving me with an overall 5.2% gain. On the other hand, National-Oilwell Varco rose another 1.33% giving me a total of 17.5% there. As I mentioned previously, I’m holding on to Apple believing it will rebound especially after the iPhone launch in two weeks.

Given my poor 1st quarter performance and my late start on the second quarter, I’m up a decent 2.18% year to date. No it isn’t great, but I can make it up.

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Seasawing stocks

Published at June 15, 2007 in Stocks. 0 Comments

What a day yesterday was for my two stocks. Apple is down to 3.66%, but National-Oilwell Varco shot up 3.76% today bringing my gain in it to 16% even. Not too shabby, but what a crazy day.

I’m expecting Apple to go back up, with the new MacBook Pro products they have launched and with the launching of their much anticipated iPhone come June 29th.

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Can you stick to your budget?

Published at June 9, 2007 in Personal Finance. 1 Comment

Back in December I wrote about making a go of our budget. Well… it didn’t happen. Budgets are just hard for me to stick to, which in some ways is kind of ironic because I’m a numbers kind of guy. I just like keeping track of things, except when it comes to a budget.

Well, after teaching our son about budgeting, I decided to pull up the spreadsheet that I originally did for our budget and brush off the dust and take a look at it. Part of me felt bad because here I am teaching my son about it, but not doing it myself.

So today while I was bored at work I decided to update it just a bit and my wife and I talked about getting back to it. It will certainly take some discipline, which is hard for me, but I know we can do it. Part of the problem may be that we aren’t really hurting for money but we don’t save enough either or manage what we have. It is nice that if we want something we can pretty much just go and get it. Not anything mind you, but if we want to go out to eat, or go pick up something for the house, etc. Naturally all those little expenditures add up. So with a little work we are going to try again.

The question then is how to stick with it. A big issue is motivation, and perhaps the motivational tricks from our money jar will help. You know, seeing it work becomes its own motivation.

What tips do you have for sticking your budget?

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From pocket change to a vacation

Published at June 8, 2007 in Misc. 0 Comments

money jarThere are many ways to save for a vacation or other expense. High interest savings accounts, mutual funds and on an on. However sometimes the old standbys are still the best.

Enter The Piggy Bank

OK, so our ‘piggy bank’ is really a big jar, but so what. I personally don’t like keeping change laying around, so into the the jar it goes. I do this every day when I come home from work, shopping or whatever. I simply empty my pocket of any change and into the jar it goes.

Now obviously this alone will mean you get a vacation about once every ten years or so. So we take it to the next level, and I also drop in most of my single dollar bills. I will keep one or two on me for the vending machine, tips or whatever, but everything else goes into the jar. When I’m in a really good mood I’ll drop the occasional 5, 10 or 20 dollar bill in as well. It seems that the more bills that are in there, the more often I will put another one in.

For our particular jar, we’ve put in about $150 in just over 2 months. OK, not enough to fly out to the Bahama’s or take that Caribbean cruise but it will cover our gas and part of our hotel expenses on our trip to the beach in a couple of weeks. If we had started a few months earlier it would have covered almost all of our costs. Not bad.

Motivation

No, it isn’t sophisticated. However what it does do is give an immediate reminder that there is money there waiting for us to use for some fun in the sun. In other words, it is motivation. Seeing all of that silver and green in that big clear jar is far more motivation than looking at a number on a bank statement. It’s immediate and rewarding and that is a good thing.

We didn’t set up a budget (I hate budgets), and yes we could save a whole lot more by putting some money directly from our account into yet another account, but what fun is that? We keep our jar right on the kitchen counter where we see it everyday when we come home and every time we go to the fridge.

What Earning Interest?

If we were going to save for something much bigger, like a cruise or trip to Europe or something similar then yes would would have a more ‘formal’ plan for saving. In our case we plan on taking a few smaller trips throughout the summer and we don’t really need several thousand dollars. Since we aren’t saving for any real length of time the interest earned wouldn’t be all that much anyway.

As I mentioned, having that jar visible is self feeding. I want to put more money in just because it is sitting there. Sure it may only be a couple dollars a day or the occasional 10 or 20 but it sure ads up in a hurry.

Give it a try, you just might be surprised how motivating it can be.

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Avoiding downturns in the market

Published at June 7, 2007 in Misc. 0 Comments

The market has taken a bit of beating. The Down Jones industrial average is down almost 200 points, the S&P 500 is down almost 27 points. Stocks all across the board are being sold off on fears of global inflation.

It is times like this when the nay-sayers say “see, ‘playing’ the market is a bad idea”. Well, if all you are doing is ‘playing’ the market then yes you will more than likely lose money. However owning the right stocks in the right market can help shield you from such downturns.

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Just passing 8 percent

Published at June 7, 2007 in Stocks. 0 Comments

In 9 days my Apple (AAPL) stock has gotten just past 8% as of this writing. My National-Oilwell Varco (NOV) stock has come down to about 5.5%, which is down a couple percentage points from a few days ago. Still not bad though and on track for a 10% gain this quarter.

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Teaching our son about budgeting

Published at June 5, 2007 in Personal Finance. 0 Comments


Our son recently started a job working for Sheridan’s Frozen Custard (and boy is it good stuff!!) and we decided to get him on a budget. So his schedule isn’t the same every week, we decided to break his check down into percentages for various things.

First thing we did was ask him what categories he thought he should have and then we wrote up what categories we thought. He came up with four:

  1. Pay Parents (he owes us some money) - 25%
  2. Savings - 40%
  3. Cash - 25%
  4. Car - 10%

Not bad and I was a little surprised that he would dedicate 40% to savings. I came up with a bit more:

  1. Pay Parents - 40%
  2. Retirement - 10%
  3. Long term savings - 20%
  4. Short term savings - 15%
  5. Cash - 15%

In describing the long term vs. short term, I suggested that short term should be for things that would take 1-3 months to save for. This would give him a short term goal that he could see easily yet would be a nice size item, like say a new XBox or whatever. Long term would be for a car, school, etc.

With regard to paying us back, I suggested that as soon as we are paid, then he can apply that money to the long term, short term and a little more to cash. This would show him the benefit of paying off a debt and then applying the money to other things, some of which would be immediate –cash– others would be long term.

The retirement I pretty much mandated. I based the percentage on approximately $50 a month and when it gets to a certain point I’ll teach him about IRAs and such. I may go ahead and open on for him for the $500 or so that it takes just to get it open, then after I’m paid off for that, apply his money to it every month. He is fairly good at math so for the short term I’m hoping that showing him how it will grow will get him excited enough that he won’t try to ask for it, then after that wears off he will just be used to it that he keeps putting in $50 or so for the next 50 years or whatever.

We’ll see how it goes…

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Starting the second quarter a bit late

Published at June 4, 2007 in Stocks and Personal Finance. 0 Comments

It has been a bit hectic lately, so I haven’t paid as much attention to my stock plan as I should have. However better late than never right?

So, last week I jumped on the Apple (AAPL) bandwagon and in 6 days I’m up almost 6%. Not too shabby. Even better on the same day I also bought National-Oilwell Varco (NOV) and I’m up almost 8% in that baby. So I have four weeks to hit my 10% goal, and so far it is looking pretty good.

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