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My Take On the Stock Market is a post from: SimpleVesting - Investing Made Simple

If you liked this post, read one of these too:

• Say Yes To Free Money
• ETFs vs. Mutual Funds: No Contest
• How to Lower Your Phone, TV, and Internet Bills
• Link Love: Back At Ya Edition
• Link Love: Dirty 30 Edition

How’s your discipline?

Is there a goal you’ve been meaning to get started on but haven’t?

Here is a motivating video – I don’t agree with the “no sleep” philosophy, but the overall message is powerful and should get you charged up.

How bad do you want it? is a post from: SimpleVesting - Investing Made Simple

If you liked this post, read one of these too:

• Say Yes To Free Money
• ETFs vs. Mutual Funds: No Contest
• How to Lower Your Phone, TV, and Internet Bills
• Link Love: Back At Ya Edition
• Link Love: Dirty 30 Edition

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Husband Sacrifices Himself to Save Wife from Joplin Tornado is a post from: SimpleVesting - Investing Made Simple

If you liked this post, read one of these too:

• Say Yes To Free Money
• ETFs vs. Mutual Funds: No Contest
• How to Lower Your Phone, TV, and Internet Bills
• Link Love: Back At Ya Edition
• Link Love: Dirty 30 Edition

The Bernank

The other day, I decided to login to my ING Direct savings account. While putzing around in there I noticed this near the top my screen “Current Annual Percentage Yield: 1.00%”.

The first thing that popped into my mind was “The Bernank” video. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then please go watch this animated video entitled “Quantitative Easing Explaind – What the Federal Reserve is Up to, and How We Got Here.” Go here to watch it–> http://bit.ly/kWMNks then come back here and read the rest of this blog post. It’s one of the funniest videos I’ve ever seen. And yes, I know that according to the Blogging 10 Commandments I am not supposed to send you off to a link outside my blog while reading a post, but I don’t care,… the video is THAT good. Please remember to come back though.

Anyway, seeing that piddly 1% interest rate made me wonder what the hell “The Bernank” is doing. The only way to get a decent interest rate is to buy US Treasury I-Bonds which are paying about 2.5% I don’t know about you, but I have much less faith in the US Government debt than I did just 5 years ago. If citizens ran their personal finances the way Congress runs our country we’d all be upside down on our mortgages and up to our eyebrows in debt, actually that’s not right, we’d each be buried under our own personal “Mt. Everest” of debt. It’s ridiculous and there is no excuse for it.

I wish somehow the entire congress could be purged, (except for may Paul Ryan and few others) and we could start over with fresh minds that haven’t been jaded by years of political posturing and nonsense.

But I digress, The Bernank has taken us to a point where the only way to get a reasonable return on your money is to invest in Government Bonds. Does that sound fishy to you? Sounds like something out of the Sopranos. Tony Soprano(The Bernank) while holding a gun to your head, “Yeah, you got a choice, my bank or, uh …. my bank. Go ahead you choose, tough guy.”

Thanks a lot, Bernank!

Sorry for the ranting in this post. It was supposed to be informing you of a way to get 2.5% interest on your money but turned into, well, THIS.

Anyway, enjoy the long weekend!

If you’re reading this and you are current or former military, “Thank You For Your Service To This Great Country!”

Between a Rock and Oh Crap is a post from: SimpleVesting - Investing Made Simple

If you liked this post, read one of these too:

• Say Yes To Free Money
• ETFs vs. Mutual Funds: No Contest
• How to Lower Your Phone, TV, and Internet Bills
• Link Love: Back At Ya Edition
• Link Love: Dirty 30 Edition

The average person needs six to eight hours of sleep each night. Sleeping under six hours will actually accelerate aging and nobody wants that.  If you‘re dragging all day, you need the full eight hours of sleep, or at least more than you’re currently getting..  Try adding 30 minutes at a time and see how you feel.  Test it for at least 7 days before evaluating.

For better sleep:

• Avoid before-bed snacks, particularly grains and sugars.
• Sleep in complete darkness or as close as possible.
• No TV right before bed – Even better, get the TV out of the bedroom completely.
• Wear socks to bed.
• Read something spiritual, calming, or religious.
• Wake up at the same time everyday, including weekends.

Vitamin D

The list of diseases that vitamin D favorably influences continues to grow.  80 to 90 percent of the vitamin D in our bodies comes from sun exposure.  However, with our modern sedentary and indoor lifestyles most people get only a few minutes of sun each day.  This is far less than our Paleolithic ancestors.

Morning Exercise Jumpstart!

Getting in the habit of exercising regularly will help keep your energy levels high and your stress levels low.   Create a routine and stick to it for at least 30 days before you allow yourself to change your mind, and don’t try to do too much at once. For example, if you know you haven’t run in years, don’t try to gout tomorrow morning and run 3 miles.   Instead, start simple with bike or elliptical for 20-30 minutes or try the popular 10-Minute Trainer program found here: http://amzn.to/mKNSBL

Exercise in the morning gets the endorphins flowing, which keeps your energy high for the rest of the day.

Endorphins = natural energy = more bounce in your step

Drink Lots of Water

If you consistently drink less than 8 cups of water a day, you may be sluggish all the time.  Get a 32 oz (1 quart, 4 cups) water bottle.  You should polish off 2 of those a day.  Try it for a week and see if your energy level increases.

Choose Protein Over Fat or Carbs

Foods with lean (low fat) protein help you feel fuller for longer. They also prevent blood sugar (insulin) spikes, giving you more steady energy. Lean protein foods include fish, chicken breasts, seafood, and lean pork.

5 Simple Energy Boosters is a post from: SimpleVesting - Investing Made Simple

If you liked this post, read one of these too:

• Say Yes To Free Money
• ETFs vs. Mutual Funds: No Contest
• How to Lower Your Phone, TV, and Internet Bills
• Link Love: Back At Ya Edition
• Link Love: Dirty 30 Edition

When our parents needed to buy a TV, a radio, a new car or whatever, they waited until the coffee can was full and they had the cash available to pay for it.  These days it’s:

• cialis online “The Super Bowl is coming… I need a new 65″ HDTV!”

• “Everyone I know has an iPad, I want one too!”

• “My friends will think I’m not cool if I don’t pay an extra $50 per month for internet & texting on my Droid Incredible 2!”

• “There’s a new MacBook Pro coming out any day now and I’ll be so pissed if I don’t get one the first day!”

Really?  Are these things are that important?  Do these things make you cool?  Will your friends really stop talking to you if you don’t have the latest, fanciest piece of telecom technology in your pocket?  I doubt it.  And if so, then your friends suck!  Dump them!

Debt is not cool.

Being debt free is cool!

Using your credit card for a big purchase and then paying 14% interest on it for the next 2-3 years is not cool.

Paying cash is cool!  – Using a good rewards credit card and paying the bill right away is cool too!

Waiting is cool!

photo source: It’sGreg

The Lost Art of Waiting is a post from: SimpleVesting - Investing Made Simple

If you liked this post, read one of these too:

• Say Yes To Free Money
• ETFs vs. Mutual Funds: No Contest
• How to Lower Your Phone, TV, and Internet Bills
• Link Love: Back At Ya Edition
• Link Love: Dirty 30 Edition

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I read a story today, the headline was “More gunfire, arrests reported in Syrian crackdown”.  Apparently, 400 people have already been killed by the Syrian government and an unknown amount of people have been detained and perhaps tortured in some manner.

This article, along with news of government crackdowns  in Libya, Nigeria, and Yemen should make you realize how lucky we are to live the relatively free country of the United States of America.

It’s so easy to get into a funk sometimes and only think about things around you that you don’t like.  My life sucks, it’s too hot where I live, it’s too cold where I live, my best friend always talks about negative stuff that brings me down, the news depresses me, I’m too fat, I’m too skinny, etc…  The list goes on and on.

Right now, take just 2 minutes and think about all the good buy clomid for men thing in your life and say out loud, or to yourself how thankdul you are for these things.  I’m so thankful for my wife/husband, I’m so thankful for my beautiful children, I’m so thankful for my health, I’m so thankful for my freedom, I’m so thankful for opportunities around me, and believe me there are tons of opportunities right under your nose.  You just have to open your eyes to see them.  Do this for at least 2 minutes.

How do you feel?

Try doing this every morning as you drive into work and/or every night as you drive home.

I guarantee your life will cheap amoxil change for the better!

How lucky are you?

photo buy amoxicillin generic courtesy of code poet generic kamagra

How Lucky Are You? is a post from: SimpleVesting - Investing Made Simple

If you liked this post, read one of these too:

• Say Yes To Free Money
• ETFs vs. Mutual Funds: No Contest
• How to Lower Your Phone, TV, and Internet Bills
• Link Love: Back At Ya Edition
• Link Love: Dirty 30 Edition

24 Essential Vacation Tips for Parents is a post from: SimpleVesting - Investing Made Simple

If you liked this post, read one of these too:

• Say Yes To Free Money
• ETFs vs. Mutual Funds: No Contest
• How to Lower Your Phone, TV, and Internet Bills
• Link Love: Back At Ya Edition
• Link Love: Dirty 30 Edition

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I read an article buy vardenafil today from the New York Times about a 70 year old woman who saved nothing for retirement.  Not $1,000, not $100, not $50 but zero, zilch, nada.  I know,… it sounds unbelievable to me too, here’s an excerpt:

If you’re worried that you haven’t saved enough for retirement, you’re probably right. Most of us haven’t. In fact, the Employee Benefit Research Institute found the majority of American workers had put away less than $25,000 for their golden years.

But even those people are in better financial shape than Susanna Wilson, 70, who saved nothing.

Her only dependable income is a Social Security check cialis no prescription of about $900 a month.

“I can never retire,” she said, her voice trembling as she stared at the floor of her living room in Grass Valley, Calif. “Probably about every two weeks when the bills are due, that’s when I get Generic Levitra Professional Online Pharmacy | Buy Levitra Professional | Cheap Levitra Professional | Order Generic Levitra Professional Online without Prescription really worried. I think ‘How am I going to pay this one?’ ”

 

The amazing part is that this isn’t some mentally ill homeless person.  At buy clomid pills one point this woman made  $65,000 per year and had a clothing line featured in Bloomingdale and Saks Fifth Avenue.  And yet, she somehow managed to save not a single cent. Now, she is 70 and scraping by on Social Security and a one day a week gig that pays, wait for it,… $12.50 an hour.

If this story kamagra super doesn’t get you thinking about saving for your retirement then nothing will.

Does retiring on 1-day of $12.50 an hour sounds appealing to you? I didn’t think so!

Go open a Roth IRA account, start contributing to your 401k plan at work.  Whatever, just start putting some money away somewhere… NOW

Related Retirement Posts:

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Save cytotec for abortion First Or Else…

5 Tips to Completely Screw-up Your Financial Future

Are You Tearing Up Money and Throwing It Away?

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Taking the Leap is a post from: SimpleVesting - Investing Made Simple

If you liked this post, read one of these too:

• Say Yes To Free Money
• ETFs vs. Mutual Funds: No Contest
• How to Lower Your Phone, TV, and Internet Bills
• Link Love: Back At Ya Edition
• Link Love: Dirty 30 Edition

A recent article kamagra gels in the Wall Street Journal makes a point that many of us in the financial planning world have long suspected.  It says that the CGM Focus fund was the top performing mutual fund, by far, over the past ten years, generating an annualized return of more than 18% a year since January 1, 2000.

Now here’s the punchline: the average investor Cheap Levitra Super Active+ in this top-performing fund lost an average of 11% a year over the same ten year period.

How is it possible for investors to lose their shirts in a fund that posted outsized cheap amoxil returns?

Most planning professionals know the fund’s manager, Ken Heebner, as a swing-for-the-fences investor, somebody prone to huge runups and equally scary drops.  A Chicago-based investment research firm called Morningstar–whose data is used by most financial advisors–calculated what is called the “dollar-weighted” return of the CGM Focus fund, which gives a picture of what investors in the fund actually experienced.  If you had bought and held Ken Heebner’s portfolio throughout the 2000s, you would indeed have received returns of 18% a year.  But the fund was so up and down that investors were alternately panicked and selling out or optimistic and crowding back in.

The buy cialis tablets article says the most dramatic buy clomid 50mg example came after the fund was up 80% in 2007.  Investors flocked in, putting $2.6 billion into the CGM portfolio–just buy propecia and proscar in time to catch its equally-dramatic 48% drop through the end of 2008.

There have been credible studies showing that the average investor underperforms the market, and this illustrates exactly how it happens.  Right after an investment generates strong returns, people tend to jump on the bandwagon–and then they experience the subsequent return to reality.  When an investment is struggling, buy amoxil without prescription people tend to abandon it, and miss out on its recovery.  Missing the upside cytotec contraindications and catching the downside, consistently, is human nature, perfectly understandable behavior.  But it inevitably leads to dismal investment results–as it did for the battered, unhappy, money-losing investors in the best-performing mutual fund of the 2000s.

The Lesson?

Do you research up front then stay put.  I also suggest an index funds rather than actively managed funds as index funds are cheaper and multiple studies by Morningstar show that they will make you more money over the long haul.  no prescription cialis Of course, you should have a trend-following strategy in place to avoid bear markets.

How to Lose Money in a Top-Performing Fund is a post from: SimpleVesting - Investing Made Simple

If you liked this post, read one of these too:

• Say Yes To Free Money
• ETFs vs. Mutual Funds: No Contest
• How to Lower Your Phone, TV, and Internet Bills
• Link Love: Back At Ya Edition
• Link Love: Dirty 30 Edition