Archives for April 2007

It’s a question I have asked myself a hundred times.  Is earthquake insurance worth the money?  I used to ask that question when I didn’t have earthquake insurance.  I finally decided to buy it because I live in a high risk area for earthquakes.  I’ve had the insurance for just over a year now and I still find myself asking whether it is worth it

I’ve often wondered why people have such radically different relationships with money.  Certainly the way their parents handled money impacts how they handle it but I believe there are other things that also affect how each of us deals with money.  I think that there is a strong correlation between people that worked as young children and those of us who choose to save as adults.

I’ve always like Ben Stein.  The guy is just plain smart.  I’ll always think of him as the teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but over the years, I’ve also come to think of him as an intelligent investor.  In Ben’s latest post he talks about two different friends of his.  One spends his days working and buying cars and facing the impact of poor

As I sat reading the Sunday paper yesterday, I found an article that talks about Motorola cutting out their pension.  Approximately two years ago, Motorola stopped offering pensions to new employees.  Now, they are changing the way the benefits are calculated for current employees which will result in smaller pensions for 24,000 of their workers.  Just one more example of why we each have to

I was reading an article recently that mentioned investors are looking for Best Buy to buy back some of their outstanding stock rather than buy other companies.  I would say that their track record of buying companies isn’t exaclty great considering they dumped a ton of money in to their Musicland purchase a few years ago and then later gave the company away as long

I just read an interesting article here that discusses the current economy and the struggles of being young in it.  My overall observation is that I seem to be reading more and more articles like this.  The author talks about the aging baby boomer population and hints at some of the issues that are sure to come as more and more of this “bubble” in

I was driving by the gas station today and looked at the cheapest gas on the sign.  It was $3.29 a gallon.  What I find interesting is the last time gas was $3.29 a gallon, the whole nation was screaming bloody murder.  Now, rather than scream, everyone seems to be just sucking it up and paying the price.  It’s interesting how we slowly aclimate to

Here I am, sitting pretty with a 5.75% fixed rate 30 year mortgage.  Sure, I could have gotten a little better rate when the mortgage rates were at their bottom, but I didn’t.  Overall, I’m not complaining about the rate I’ve got.  At least it’s a reasonable rate and it’s fixed.  I don’t have to worry about rate adjustments every 6 months, or payments that