Archive for October, 2006
Friday, October 20th, 2006
Cascading Expense Lifestyles – Then and Now
My grandmother passed away recently and I began to recall some of the stories she told me as a child. I recall one particular story about how she remembered as a child her grandfather’s vibrantly green wagon with big red wheels hitched of course to some horses. “I had fun playing on the wagon” she [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cascading Expenses by RichSlick
Thursday, October 19th, 2006
Goodbye ING
I’m in the process of shutting down my INGDirect account. For the past few months they’ve been stuck at a paltry 4.40% interest rate while others like Wamu, Citibank, HSBC, and Emigrant have remained around 5%. ING is simply not competitive anymore. Worse yet is the fact that once you pick a bank like WAMU [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Money Management by RichSlick
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
Inflation, Gold, Oil & the Canadian Dollar
On Monday night I ran an ETF Covered Call Optimizer Report and the results were interesting. The highest returns writing covered calls on ETFs ended up being GDX (Gold Miners) for March 2007. Evidently, speculators and options traders think gold will continue to climb while the betting on oil (XLE) for March 2007 calls were [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Money Trades by RichSlick
Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
Grocery Shock!
On Friday, I wrote about Dangerous Inflation because of bad wheat, tomato, and orange harvests going on in different parts of the world. Last night, I went over to the grocery store to pick up a few items and I had sticker shock! Check out the price of a gallon of milk $5.99! I know [...]
No Comments » - Posted in The Fed by RichSlick
Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
Good Days are Here Again!
As I stated yesterday, I had a visit with a good friend this past weekend and he told me about his visit to the dentist last week. He drove into the same parking lot he’s been driving into every 6 months for the past 6 years to get his dental checkup. He walked into the [...]
No Comments » - Posted in MMO by RichSlick
Monday, October 16th, 2006
Cascading Expense Lifestyles – Human Maintenance
I had a good visit with a close friend this weekend and he gave me some interesting ideas for this weeks blog. It seems my friend went to visit the doctor and dentist this past week and he was amazed at a few things. The first was the number of drug sales people lurking around [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cascading Expenses by RichSlick
Friday, October 13th, 2006
Dangerous Inflation
I’m excited to see stocks up for the past few days but I’m seriously concerned about inflation. Even more troubling were a few stories on Bloomberg about bad harvests. The first story on Bloomberg: Orange Juice Soars as Florida Crop May Be Smallest in 17 Years By Choy Leng Yeong Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) — Orange-juice [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Financial Safety by RichSlick
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
Exchange Traded Funds vs. Mutual Funds
And the winner is……. Well, winner is a relative term but I’m going to give you a real life example of how mutual funds simply can’t compete against Exchange Traded Funds. I’ll admit that I am biased since I primarily invest in ETFs but let me lay out my argument in terms that are simple: [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in MMO,Money Trades by RichSlick
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
Finance Bloggers’ Finance Fallacies Part 3
While there are many people who advocate saving every darn little penny that you can and cutting back on expenses every chance you can get, I have an entirely different approach: I believe that you work in a job/career to create a certain Quality of Life rather than to work for “retirement.” The idea behind [...]
No Comments » - Posted in MMO by RichSlick
Wednesday, October 11th, 2006
Finance Bloggers’ Finance Fallacies Part 2
Now let’s take a close look at what would happen if everyone took some financial bloggers advice and stopped buying those lattes, HDTV sets, new cars, and all the other consumer “stuff” people spend their money on. 1. Sales would go down. 2. Businesses would lose money. 3. Employees would be laid off. 4. Economy [...]