Financial Reflections

Mint.com is a an online software budgeting package that is a huge success so far. I first heard about it through a “Twitter” sent from a friend who simply said “mint.com is pretty slick” He’s a graphic designer so I was expecting an Adobe Photoshop tutorial rather than a personal finance tool.
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The New York Times just ran an interesting article comparing business budgeting to home budgeting. Apparently, many an entrepreneur out there doesn’t budget as well in their personal lives as they do with their business.

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Normally I don’t write articles like this, but I found a neat way to introduce my kids to investing, or at least find a great gift for my investor friends and family, so I thought I’d share the find with everyone.

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Sometimes it’s the mistakes we make that teach us the most.  I just read an article from someone who made a small fortune out of a much larger fortune, and the lessons the author learned from his experience provide some powerful lessons on investing.  I thought I’d comment on them and add a few of my own lessons.

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I’ve written before about how we (at least in the US) are poorly educated when it comes to personal finance.  We lack some very fundamental knowledge when it comes to the day-to-day management of our money.  Ideas like budgeting, saving an emergency fund, or even writing a check is rarely taught, from what I’ve seen.  So when it comes to investing, why do some people in the finance industry try to talk to us like we have MBAs?

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Now that I’m moving ahead financially, I’m looking to the future.  That means that I’m trying to figure out - for the first time - how to invest my money.  I do have a few investments in my retirement plans, which are in mutual funds.  But I also have thought about purchasing various individual stocks with one of those online investing companies all my coworkers use.  Then the prospect of a salaried gig at my current employer came up, and I started to think about using the employee stock purchase program if I was to accept the offer.  Is it worth it to invest in your own company’s stock?

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I’ve heard this one several times before: everyone’s becoming a millionaire.  It goes right along with the idea that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  These days, that certainly seems to be the case.  Some of us are watching the numbers on our quarterly statements getting bigger, while the rest have the bankruptcy attorney on speed dial.

But there is a question I can’t avoid here:  Why are there so many millionaires today?  Here’s a few answers I came up with:

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Whenever Google does something, the world takes notice. So when they opened a finance site, I just had to take a look.

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In a previous entry, I decided to purchase a stock pick that was sent to my fax machine at work.  I only did the purchase on paper, not laying any actual money on what I was pretty sure was a dubious stock to start with.  Here’s how things have gone now that over a month has passed…

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For years I’ve seen faxes come in to work claiming to have the next big stock pick.  And for years, I’ve thrown them into the trash without a second thought - until yesterday.  That’s when I decided to buy one and see what happened.

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