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Monthly Archives: December 2006

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Running Around Like Crazy!

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Its been a couple of days since we last posted, Miel and I just got back from a quick visit with Family up in Bucks County Pennsylvania. If you’ve never been to rural Pennsylvania, its a historic and marvelous place to visit. Parts are well worth the trip.

The major problem is that now we’re both back in DC and running around like crazy trying to get x-mas gifts for friends and family! Neither of us have really had a spare minute to plan or make the holiday as great as it seems on TV.

We’ll keep you updated on the holiday damage to our pocketbooks!

Happy Holidays!

-James

Stocks from Santa!

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Holiday Shopping Idea: James is always talking about buying stocks for gifts, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to do that. Here is a tip from Simple magazine on how it works.

Stock up on stocks. Get nieces, nephews, and godchildren stock certificates. “People don’t realize how inexpensive it can be,” says Adela Rios, a financial adviser with Merrill Lynch. “Many kids shop at Wet Seal, for example, and that stock has been trading between $2 and $10.” Imax, Atari, and Blockbuster are other relatively inexpensive stocks that might interest kids. Keep in mind that stocks can be volatile, so this is a fun present, but it also might pique kids’ interest in investing. Buy the stock in your account and have the stock certificate issued in the child’s name. Ask your financial-services firm to contact the transfer agent for whatever stock you choose and it will arrange to have the stock certificate sent.

Happy Investing!

Miel

Finance Book Critics

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Yeah! James & I are now officially finance book critics. James has already been doing this for years with a pretty extensive collection of finance books, not to mention having checked out every book worth while at the MLK library.

We recently brainstormed on ways to enhance our blog and came up with the idea of asking publishers to send us books to review. James sent out a couple of requests and got a hook right away. Our first free book to review and discuss showed up by UPS last night. In the holiday season where receiving gifts is always great, it was delightful to have the package arrive.

Our first book is the Online Millionaire – Strategies for Building a Web-based Empire on eBay and Beyond. I haven’t had a chance to take much of a crack at it, but perhaps you’ll find us surfing in our pajamas with loads of cash rolling in. You’ll have a full review soon to come, but I thought I’d share my excitement about getting free stuff at the holidays that my mom doesn’t have to send me!

Happy Holidays!

Miel

P.S. Never fear, we are fully free to give our opinions and don’t have to review anything positively, so you’ll get our real opinions on the books we review.

Its a Very Good Year on Wall Street

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Apparently Wall Street is having a bumper year. According to yahoo news, the total dollar amount of bonus offered offered by firms on the street will be $23.9 billion. This is more than the total amount of goods and services produced by some small countries like Kenya or El Salvador.

Some firms like Goldman Sachs in particular are doing very well. Goldman Sachs’ CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, scored total annual compensation to the tune of 53 million dollars. Some of the administrative assistants at Blankfein’s company made over $120,000 in bonuses.

The compensation is expected to generate $1.6 billion in tax revenue for New York state and at least 500 million for the city (Clicky).

Normally, we wouldn’t comment on this, but these sums are truly titanic. No doubt about it, this is undeniably a good year for Wall Street.

Best,

James

Protecting Yourself From 401k Looting

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Being a criminology student, I’m always on the lookout for information that pertains to both finance and criminal activity! Well, this morning a good friend of mine sent us a great USA Today article on 401k theft. The article basically says that smaller companies (e.g. with less than 100 people) have a higher risk of theft from company 401k plans. The main reason why this sort of thing happens is that there isn’t a lot of regulation of 401ks because they are so new.

The article from the USA today is here. There have been a couple of follow up stories in local media, here and here.

The major thing about white collar from (like 401k theft) is that its hard to see when someone is stealing from you. Its not like street crime, when you know that you’ve been robbed. What I think this illustrates is that you might consider two things to protect yourself:

1) Keeping an eye on your 401k account.

2) Monitoring your companies financial statements.

Keeping an eye on your 401k will let you know if your money is still in your account. Monitoring your companies financial statements will let you know if management is experiencing financial problems and whether or not they have incentive to steal.

Hope this helps!

Best,

James

Some Useful Podcasts

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If you’re seriously interested in finance you probably need good legal advice. Like most people, you probably don’t want to pay a whole lot for it. Well, one good place to start is by checking out AcidPlanet’s collection of legal podcasts. Most of the podcasts are informative, brief and address general topics such as co-buying a home or creating your own will.

Click here for the podcast directory.

Best,

James

p.s. Kudos to my good friend Miles for sending this in!

Financially Rehabilitating Your Partner

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Jenna over at money bucks coffee had a great couple of postings on rehabilitating her husband’s credit score. To make a long story short, when she met her husband, it came out that he had a fair amount of credit card and student loan debt. To Jenna’s credit, when she found out about this, she took the bull by the horns and helped her husband take action to address the situation.

A similar situation happened to us DINKS. When my wife Miel first moved out to DC, she had accumulated some credit card debts due to a lack of jobs in Oregon. Eventually, it became apparent that Miel’s debt was an issue. The end result of it was that, she decided (*with some prodding by yours truly) to pay off her cards. It worked, Miel was credit card debt free in less than a year (around $13k in the whole).

The long and the short of this is, sometimes spouses need a bit of financial rehabilitation and it can be done successfully as our and Jenna’s examples show.

Happy Holidays!

Best,

James

A Rags to Riches Tale

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There is a new movie in theaters called ‘In Pursuit of Happiness”. Will Smith plays a marginally employed salesman who becomes homeless while pursuing a career as a stockbroker. While the movie is supposedly touching and well done, the real driver behind the film is that its basically a true story.

The inspiration behind the film is a man named Chris Gardner. Like the movie, Chris Gardner became marginally employed and lost his apartment while pursuing an internship at the brokerage firm Dean Witter. While he was living on the street, he managed to ace his internship and was hired by the firm.

Chris’s story is a modern day Horatio Alger tale, its a rags to riches story that exemplifies the values of parenthood, hard work and pursuing ones dreams. If you don’t get a chance to check out the movie you might consider looking at Chris’s webpage. He’s got more details of his story as well as some pictures of him and famous people.

Best,

James

AdBrite Works!

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We don’t normally wax poetic about our on-line advertising service here at the DINKS. But, we did receive our first check from Adbrite a couple of days ago. Seeing as how we don’t make a ton of cash from the blog, its nice to receive the small amounts we do get.

Of course, the major player in the blogvertising world is Google’s adsense. Adsense gives you lots of great features like targeted ads, but you have to wait until you get $100 before they send you a check. For some sites with modest traffic, that could take months! Adbrite will send you a check for any amount you choose, in our case the minimum is $5.00. Its not a lot, but even checks for five dollars are great.

Just so we can share the love with all of you…a picture of our check is below!

Best,

James

p.s. we know its only for $5.98, so please don’t laugh!

The sales calls have started…

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So, a couple of weeks ago, I signed up for this deal where you pay $1.95 for a 1oz silver bullion coin. Since silver is trading at $13.7 per oz, buying at $1.95 is a good deal.

However, there is no such thing as a free lunch. When I signed up for the deal, I gave them my telephone number. Since, then I’ve gotten a couple of calls trying to sell me more silver. We’ll see what comes next. I’ll keep you updated!

Best,

James

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