August 2006

Blogvertising

August 31, 2006

As James noted in a recent post, trends show that blogging is taking off in new ways. It seems from the BBC segment that I’m watching now, that advertisers are now becoming hip to this trend as well. Looking for new avenues for reaching consumers, advertisers are now turning to blogs as a medium. James [...]

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Capitalism is alive and well in the post Soviet!

August 31, 2006

Headed to the Ukraine for work, I didn’t initially expect to see capitalism so alive and well. I was in Romania for work in January and enjoyed the ability to live very well off of per diem. My first indication that things were different was green tea for $4 and dinner to follow for about [...]

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EZPW Inc. and Sleazy Capitalism

August 30, 2006

This post is about EZCORP Inc. I first heard about this gem from its listing in the IBD 100. The Investors Business Daily is a great paper, but not all of its picks are ethically acceptable. Case in point: EZCORP Inc. Since I’m continually searching for ways to make a buck, I was checking over [...]

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The Mortgage Industry Encourages Dishonesty

August 29, 2006

Miel and I have shopped for a fair amount of mortgages in our investing career. In our many hours of loan shopping, I’ve reached the conclusion that structural aspects of the business of borrowing money from large lenders encourage dishonesty. Specifically, for investment properties, lenders charge a higher rate (up to .25 to 1 percent) [...]

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A Cautionary Tale

August 26, 2006

Daytrading. Nearly all the personal finance books I’ve read say that daytrading is a BAD idea. They give three reasons why this is the case: 1) daytrading subjects your investment to short term capital gains taxes, 2) short holding periods rule out large returns and 3) high trading costs reduce profits. That said, since Miel [...]

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Couples Finance Links

August 26, 2006

Unfortunately, “one-stop” sources for information on couples and money are sparse. Most of whats on the internet are media features or advice columns. Despite that, here are some links that might be useful for couples who to want to improve their financial situation. 1) Investopedia has some nuts n’ bolts basics. 2) The Fool.com is [...]

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Money on NPR

August 25, 2006

This morning as I was waking up over breakfast, I heard an interesting interview on NPR. The guy on the radio was a personal finance expert and was advising young twenty-somethings on how they should manage their money. The interview was pleasantly brief and had some interesting comments on demographics and cash. Provided you have [...]

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James’s September and October Goals

August 24, 2006

With the hullaballou surrounding our wedding, I let a few things slide by the wayside. One of these was setting and maintaining monthly financial goals. Personally, I find monthly written goals to be useful because they keep me on track towards the bigger picture and thought I would share them with the wider blog community. [...]

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Holiday Airfare Savings!

August 22, 2006

I’m excited to report that I’ve once again worked the system to our advantage! I started thinking about holiday air travel a couple of days ago. I looked online and saw nothing but expensive tickets. Everything from DC to SF was in the $400 range, when I prefer the $200 range. I cringed at the [...]

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Smooth Sailing at Prosper.com

August 22, 2006

We haven’t blogged much about prosper over the past few weeks. This is largely due the fact that we haven’t had any problems! While our loan portfolio leans more towards higher interest loans with greater risk, we haven’t had any serious payment problems (e.g. delinquencies). Thank goodness! To let our readers know what sort of [...]

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