QuestForAMillion.net

Our financial situation at the the end of September has been posted on the Monthly Results page.   We had a net worth increase of about 4% which I felt was outstanding.  We’re well on our way to achieving our financial goals for the year.  I’m starting to think of goals for next year, which I’ll […]

I played the Consumer Consequences game today.  I was disappointed to learn that it takes 4.1 Earths to sustain my lifestyle if everyone in the world lived like me.  I do well with garbage and recycling but my transportation habits killed me.  What’s really disappointing is that I commute 16 miles round trip to work […]

Here’s the hardest part of the financial plan: waiting for it all to come to fruition. We’ve made a number of plans over the years, only to change them a few months later. We were always tweaking. It occurred to me the other day that the reason for all the tweaking was impatience. The plans […]

Got out of Apple today at $144.00 for a $200 gain before commissions.  I then put 10% into IWR, the midcap ETF, and most of the rest into SPY, the S&P 500 tracking ETF.  I did make a small tweak to the plan and put 5% into FXE, an ETF used to track the Euro […]

Alright, after my recent issues with trying to figure out the market I think I’ve come to some conclusions.
#1. It’s a fallacy to think that I can beat the market. I’m way outgunned. Mutual fund managers do this stuff for a living and most of them can’t beat the market. This is just a hobby […]

We’ve been using the furniture my wife got as a teenager in our bedroom since we’ve been married. It’s old, and a tad dated, but in fine shape and certainly does it’s duty as designed. But we grew tired of it (like a lot of things we’ve had for years). At the […]

I like to think I’m a smart person…I may not be, but I like to think I am.  So I find it very frustrating to be so completely lost.  The stock market really spooked me a few weeks ago when it went down 300 points an hour into the trading day.  This was after several […]

The 117th Carnival of Personal Finance is up at kmull.  My post on earning interest vs. paying interest is included.  Check out the carnival and all the other great articles!

We’ve all read it and heard it a hundred times: “It’s better to earn interest than pay interest.” Why? For some the answer may be obvious, but I thought I would illustrate a real-life example for everyone’s benefit, my own included.
We recently paid off about a $14,700.00 balance on a car loan. […]

The 116th Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Advanced Personal Finance. My “Budgeting for laid-back people” post is featured. Go check it out and read all the other great entries!