Daily personal finance observation, musing and decisions in a journey toward financial independence by 36 with at least a million dollars.

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Last news: January 1, 1970 00:00:00

Moneysmartz helps connect individuals with the information and advice they need to organize, simplify, and strengthen their personal finances.

Total news: 31
Last news: December 11, 2007 22:26:08

Creating a financial plan can be expensive and difficult, particularly if you are starting from scratch. If you are inclined to save some money and invest some of your own time, then the Financial Planning Toolkit from CCH is an inexpensive and easy way to get started. The site includes an overview of the major steps in the financial planning process, including investing, insurance and risk management, retirement planning, estate planning, and tax planning. A variety of planning tools and calculators makes creating your own financial plan as easy as pointing and clicking your mouse. Recognized as a Forbes Best of the Web site, the CCH Financial Planning Toolkit is a must visit site for do-it-yourself financial planners.

Creating a financial plan can be expensive and difficult, particularly if you are starting from scratch. If you are inclined to save some money and invest some of your own time, then the Financial Planning Toolkit from CCH is an inexpensive and easy way to get started. The site includes an overview of the major steps in the financial planning process, including investing, insurance and risk management, retirement planning, estate planning, and tax planning. A variety of planning tools and calculators makes creating your own financial plan as easy as pointing and clicking your mouse. Recognized as a Forbes Best of the Web site, the CCH Financial Planning Toolkit is a must visit site for do-it-yourself financial planners.

Site Name: Wikipedia
Site Description: With over 2 million articles, Wikipedia is the worlds biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. Anyone can change the encyclopedia or create new articles. Not all of the articles have been verified. However, if you are looking for a wealth of information on almost any financial subject, then Wikipedia is a great place to get started and find useful information and links to other helpful sites.
Bottom Line: For anyone serious about managing their finances and making the most of their time, Wikipedia is worth a permanent bookmark. Since the content is growing everyday, the site is worth frequent visits. For a quick list of financial topics on Wikipedia, visit the Wikipedia profile in Moneysmartz.

Site Name: Wikipedia
Site Description: With over 2 million articles, Wikipedia is the worlds biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. Anyone can change the encyclopedia or create new articles. Not all of the articles have been verified. However, if you are looking for a wealth of information on almost any financial subject, then Wikipedia is a great place to get started and find useful information and links to other helpful sites.
Bottom Line: For anyone serious about managing their finances and making the most of their time, Wikipedia is worth a permanent bookmark. Since the content is growing everyday, the site is worth frequent visits. For a quick list of financial topics on Wikipedia, visit the Wikipedia profile in Moneysmartz.

During the holiday season, the gap between Christmas and the New Year is usually a good time for quiet reflection and planning, allowing us to step back from the hustle and bustle of our daily lives and take in the big picture.

If you are in the mood for a financial assessment, then the December issue of Money Magazine offers tools and advice for tracking your financial goals and comparing where you stand to your peers.

For extra motivation to get you started, see how your net worth stacks up with others. Results are by age and income, with the median net worth for youngsters around $400 and for seniors around $175,000.

Additional tools and advice include:

How to Be a Millionaire

How to Own Your Dream Home

How to Afford an Expensive College for Your Children

How to Retire Early

How to Launch Your Own Business

If you dont start now, then it may be another year before you catch your breath and have a chance to plan again.

During the holiday season, the gap between Christmas and the New Year is usually a good time for quiet reflection and planning, allowing us to step back from the hustle and bustle of our daily lives and take in the big picture.

If you are in the mood for a financial assessment, then the December issue of Money Magazine offers tools and advice for tracking your financial goals and comparing where you stand to your peers.

For extra motivation to get you started, see how your net worth stacks up with others. Results are by age and income, with the median net worth for youngsters around $400 and for seniors around $175,000.

Additional tools and advice include:

How to Be a Millionaire

How to Own Your Dream Home

How to Afford an Expensive College for Your Children

How to Retire Early

How to Launch Your Own Business

If you dont start now, then it may be another year before you catch your breath and have a chance to plan again.

Sometimes the best financial advice is to be still and listen to your own counsel. However, for even the most skilled and self-reliant stock-pickers, an occasional dose of outside perspective can be helpful.

If you are looking for a brokerage for advice, then StarMines recent ranking of big brokerage performance is a good place to start.

Wachovia Securities is at the top of the list, in part because of a strong buy on Comcast, with a 46% gain over the rating period.

The remaining top ten includes Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, RBC Capital Markets, JPMorgan, Bear Stearns, Stifel Nicolaus, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and CIBC World Markets.

Sometimes the best financial advice is to be still and listen to your own counsel. However, for even the most skilled and self-reliant stock-pickers, an occasional dose of outside perspective can be helpful.

If you are looking for a brokerage for advice, then StarMines recent ranking of big brokerage performance is a good place to start.

Wachovia Securities is at the top of the list, in part because of a strong buy on Comcast, with a 46% gain over the rating period.

The remaining top ten includes Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, RBC Capital Markets, JPMorgan, Bear Stearns, Stifel Nicolaus, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and CIBC World Markets.

For many of us, the holiday season is a time to get together with family and friends and take a brief time out from our hectic lives. For others, its a time to plan and prepare for a successful new year. If you are in the latter group, then Money Magazines Best ideas for 2007 will jumpstart your planning process with investment, home buying, home selling, retirement, and savings tips. My favorite is for homebuyers. Money recommends buying from a builder, since they cant afford to sit on the sidelines while the market recovers. Youll probably be able to negotiate a lower price with a lot more upgrades.

For many of us, the holiday season is a time to get together with family and friends and take a brief time out from our hectic lives. For others, its a time to plan and prepare for a successful new year. If you are in the latter group, then Money Magazines Best ideas for 2007 will jumpstart your planning process with investment, home buying, home selling, retirement, and savings tips. My favorite is for homebuyers. Money recommends buying from a builder, since they cant afford to sit on the sidelines while the market recovers. Youll probably be able to negotiate a lower price with a lot more upgrades.

For many of us, the holiday season is a time to get together with family and friends and take a brief time out from our hectic lives. For others, its a time to plan and prepare for a successful new year. If you are in the latter group, then Money Magazines Best ideas for 2007 will jumpstart your planning process with investment, home buying, home selling, retirement, and savings tips. My favorite is for homebuyers. Money recommends buying from a builder, since they cant afford to sit on the sidelines while the market recovers. Youll probably be able to negotiate a lower price with a lot more upgrades.

Stock markets continue to set new records, and so does our net worth. With over $26,000 gain in our diversified portfolio, coupled with strong cash flow production from Money Manager Co. and Perfect Future Publishing Co. but offset by some increased tax exposure, our bottomline improved by 30 grand in the month of May alone. In another record, for the ...

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Approximately one year ago, there was a time when I was glued to the social personal lending site Prosper.com every morning, seeking and funding good loan proposals. In a matter of a few months, I underwrote 163 loans with a total of $14,880 at an average interest rate of 17.6%. I was hoping to make double-digit returns on my cashpile ...

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Let me start this months installment of portfolio update with the announcement of changed format. As you can see below, the new design brought a few important changes: 1) Grouped by asset class (domestic equity, foreign equity, cash, etc.), instead of investment type (mutual fund, stock, cash, etc.) to better represent asset allocation 2) Improved breakdown of month-to-month changes; now ... (5 comments)

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A booming stock market is behind the stellar performance of our household finance in the past month. With over $38,000 in portfolio gains in the month, and continued cash flow generation from my day job and sideline business, our net worth broke into the 700s. The monthly improvement of $45,748 is the second best in record, only behind October 2005 ... (10 comments)

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One of the commentators to my last monthly portfolio update rightfully pointed out that Im not using the right benchmark to measure my portfolio performance. Given that Im positioning my portfolio for a sizable exposure to international equity, it is unfair to use S&P 500 as the benchmark. To fix this, Im going to construct a meaningful benchmark for my ... (9 comments)

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Back to 2003 when I started this blog, I wrote a post "Is $1,000,000 enough?" Then, I crafted a statistical model to argue that if I spend thrift and invest wise, one million dollars can be a good goal to support a happy retirement at 40. At that time, I just purchased our first house and started the American Dream ... (23 comments)

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My portfolio performed quite well in the month of March. The monthly gain of $13,120, or 1.9% of the portfolio size, is almost a full percentage point above the S&P 500 gains. The gain is helped by my sizable foreign equity exposure, and an opportunistic gain in a particular stock position. Below is the breakdown of my portfolio at the ... (9 comments)

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The dip in our net worth in February is, as I correctly predicted in last months summary, no more than noise in our march toward financial independence. Helped by a rebounding stock market and a surge of business income, our assets grew more than $24,000 in March. This also concludes the first quarter of 2007, in which our net worth ... (3 comments)

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I am either the best customer of Citibank, or the worst, or both. You might have learned from Wall Street Journal that big sharks like hedge funds are running the carry trades by borrowing Japanese Yen at almost-zero interest and investing outside of the island country with much higher returns. Similarly, if you regularly read this little blog, you already ... (15 comments)

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