QuestForAMillion.net

I’ve been reading about the Paradox of Thrift lately. Wikipedia has a good definition here. Basically, it says that if everyone starts being thrifty and saving their money rather than spending it, we’re all doomed economically. More saving equals lower spending which equals lower demand for products which equals lower prices which equals lower corporate […]

My company offers both Non-Qualified Stock Options (NQSOs) and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). I was granted a number of NQSOs when I started with the company and I’ve recently joined the ESPP. The ESPP allows employees to buy company stock at a 15% discount to the fair market value (FMV) of the stock […]

We received our first cash reward for using the Chase Freed Visa for our normal purchasing the other day. As advertised, we ordered a $250 check after racking up $200 in rewards. Getting money back for doing something we’re doing anyway sure is nice. Now if they can just figure out how to handle our […]

Despite my portfolio review and new investing direction I posted in September, I sold everything in my Rollover IRA on Friday. Actually I only did this because I’m moving the account to Wells Fargo so I can get free trades. I did have the option of just transferring the securities held in the account, but […]

We’ve had a number of problems using our E*Trade Complete account as our primary checking account lately. Some I’ve documented on here, some I haven’t. After the issues we’ve had, we’ve decided that this account is not a good account to use as a primary day-to-day account. I like the structure of the account - […]

So last month we made our normal credit card payment on our rewards card, the entire balance as usual, and the payment was returned for insufficient funds. I have never missed a payment, bounced a check, or had insufficient funds in my entire life. And this time was no exception. In addition to this mythical […]

2007 wound up as a banner year for us financially. We surpassed our net worth goal of $100,000 by year end by over $8000. Given our starting net worth of $72,068, we increased our net worth by $36,631, a 50% increase. We changed philosophies about halfway through the year, opting to pay off debt rather […]

Our results for December are posted.
We had a nice increase in net worth last month, largely due to our current focus on saving. Taking command of our own escrow helped a bunch, since we can now count the money saved for insurance and taxes in our net worth. We had a net worth gain of […]