Pros and Cons of Investing in Gold

The following is a guest post. Enjoy! 

How about you all? Is gold currently incorporated as a part of your investing strategy? Why or why not? What’s the best way you’ve found to invest in gold? 


Do you think gold will continue to go up in price?


Share your experiences by commenting below!


Jacob’s Thoughts – Listed below are my random thoughts as I was reading this article:

• Fairly frequently, I get asked about my thoughts about using gold as an investment. Unfortunately, I have very little expertise/knowledge about gold, so I cannot provide very much guided assistance. However, it’s good to have another post here to bring this topic to the forefront!
• @ The future direction of gold – 
  • I do know that gold has been an investment of choice in the past few years since the recession in 2008-2009. As such, the prices of gold have increased drastically.
  • Because of this, I would be very careful about placing a lot of money in to gold due to risk of buying in at the “top” of the upward price swing.
• @ Whether or not gold is a safe and/or good investment + how gold should/should not be incorporated in to one’s investing strategy – 
  • Personally, I do not have gold incorporated as part of my investing strategy.
  • However, is gold a good thing to have in one’s investment mix? My answer is “probably,” however, I would need to do some more research about this to tell for certain.
  • If I did, I would either use ETFs or precious metal index mutual funds to do this, as opposed to buying physical metal holdings.
  • Additionally, I would ensure that only a small proportion of my total investment holdings were placed in gold/precious metals.
  • One very attractive characteristic about precious metals is that they have relatively low correlation coefficients with the returns of normal equity investments. As such, the addition of precious metals to my investment portfolio would give further diversification and help shifting the efficient frontier for risk/return trade-off.

***Photo courtesy of http://images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-3400039523-hd.jpg

Easy Like Sunday Morning Weekly Recap and Roundup – # 6 – January 22nd, 2012

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.

Each week, the purpose of the Easy Like Sunday Morning Weekly Recap and Roundup series is the same – for me to be able to connect with you, the readers, on a more personal (non personal finance informational transmission only) level, encourage community, and also to give back to the other bloggers around the blogosphere who have mentioned My Personal Finance Journey throughout the past week.

As far as the theme goes, the title of the roundup gives it away. The roundup theme is named after the Lionel Richie song, Easy Like Sunday Morning (which I play once a week while putting this together), to remind us of the importance of slowing down at least once a week to take appreciation for that which transpired over the past few days.

So, without further ado, let’s get started with this week’s roundup!

Weekly Updates from Jacob’s Personal Finance Journey and Life 

• As far as my life in general, since Christmas, I have been trying to power through the month of January – working in the lab on my Alzheimer’s disease drug development project and also trying to continue training for the full trail marathon I’m planning to do in March of this year.
• One thing that I am looking forward to is when the days get longer with Daylight Savings Time finishing. Since I bike ride to and from the lab where I work during the day and don’t get off work until 5 pm or later, it seems that I am ALWAYS riding home in the dark! It’s not too bad since I can ride on sidewalks the whole way, but it does take about 50% longer since I have to hop curves and stop more often than when it is light and I can be on the road.
• Also – this weekend, my family, girlfriend, and my sister’s boyfriend have embarked on a ski trip to Breckenridge, Colorado for one week. Luckily, it appears that the snow in the Rocky Mountains has FINALLY started to pick back up. It’s been about 2 years since we last went skiing “out West.” Shown below is a picture of my sister and I from our last trip to Breckenridge in December 2009 about to brave the blizzard and do some “easy” slopes. Enjoy! 
• As far as my personal finances go, the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012 was a busy time with some deep thinking about what I wanted to accomplish financially during the coming year. You can see my resulting financials goals for 2012 by clicking here. 
• In addition, the other big development during the Christmas to New Years time period was that I sent in my estimated tax payments for 2011 that I hadn’t paid yet for the entire year (oops!). Lesson learned though – I’ll be sure to be better about this in 2012.

Guest Posts from Personal Finance Bloggers on My Personal Finance Journey

Over the past couple weeks, there were three guest post here at My Personal Finance Journey.


-Jason from Frugal Dad posted about The Effects of Reality TV Shows on Reality.
-Wayne from Young Family Finance posted about Back to the Basics: Control Your Spending.
-Rob Bennett from A Rich Life posted about Valuation Informed Index Investing. 

If you would like to guest post on my site, please click here to read more details about how to kick off the guest posting process. I’d love to hear from you!

Blasts From the Past

For the first 6 months after I started this blog, I pretty much “blogged in a cave.” What I mean by this is that I cranked out over 200 very good blog articles in this time period, but since I didn’t know any better, I didn’t reach out to other bloggers, get involved with the online community through commenting on other sites, or do any kind of site promotion at all. As you can imagine, some of the articles written during this time period didn’t get the attention that I think they deserved corresponding to the content contained.

The Blast from the Past section will feature one old My Personal Finance Journey article each week that I feel is high quality, but was published prior to my blog having any sort of real readership. This week’s article is listed below:

Best Options for the Cash Portion of Your Retirement Account – This post discusses what an investor is to do with cash that he or she wants to keep in his or her retirement account, given the dismally low interest rates currently being offered. Unfortunately, the verdict is that if you want extreme liquidity in your retirement account, you’re not going to earn much in the way of interest. However, thinking back on this subject/post with what I know now, you might also think about trying a short term bond index fund for a stable investment similar to cash.

If you know of someone in the PF blogging world that is really doing amazing things, feel free to send me an email for consideration in future roundups.

Giveaways

Blog Carnivals Featuring My Personal Finance Journey Articles

Top 10 Referring Sites to My Personal Finance Journey This Past Week

However, I have several other domain names purchased, and I am currently learning WordPress Self-Hosted to get these sites live as soon as time allows! I’ll be sure to keep you all updated on progress.

Well, that wraps up this week! If you have any suggestions or recommendations for things you’d like to see in this weekly roundup, just let me know by sending me an email!

As always, thanks to all the readers for creating such a great community here at My Personal Finance Journey. Your interaction is what keeps me going on this blog!

Until next time – Jacob


How about you all? How is your January going for you?!

Welcome Enemy of Debt Readers!

Welcome Enemy of Debt readers! Thanks so much for stopping by my site by way of the my guest post today over at my friend Brad’s site listed below. As the picture to the right shows, I’m very happy to have you! 🙂

Using Your Credit Card As Your Primary Emergency Fund – An Alarming Trend in Society?

If you’re stopping by my site for the first time, I just wanted to give a little guide towards what I offer here, since information overload can occur quickly and time is our most valuable asset.

To introduce myself, my name is Jacob. I started this site back in January of 2010, and since then, have poured my heart and soul in to the site to produce a product I am proud of and I think adds value to the world. You can read a little more on my background and even see a picture of me on the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us.

What I Write About Here At My Personal Finance Journey

In short, I like to offer actionable personal finance advice with the goal of achieving long-term success. 


Specifically, I really enjoy writing about the following areas (I’ve also listed several posts related to each topic in case you’re interested in reading more):

• Long term investing and asset allocation strategy analysis
• Vanguard vs. Fidelity – Which Funds Are Better?
• Dollar Cost Averaging vs. Dollar Value Averaging – Which Makes You More Money in the Long Run?
• What To Do With Your 401k Savings When Leaving Your Employer
• Deciding how to prioritize new funds as they come in to various spending requirement areas
• Account Prioritization Hierarchy – Which Monetary Needs Come First?
• How Do Mortgage Payments Fit in to the Account Hierarchy?
• How to develop a lifestyle of frugality and live according to your life dreams and life values 
• Balancing Frugality with Fun

Additionally, if you liked the theme of the guest post I wrote for Enemy of Debt today and are interested in similar posts I’ve written in the past, you might want to check out the ones below:

• What Would You Do if You Had Credit Card Debt?
• Places to Store Your Emergency Fund
• Helping a Friend Get out of Debt – Part 1 – Collect Your Debts,  Part 2 – Finalize Your Debt Free Action Plan,  Part 3 – Cut Your Interest Rates in Half. 

***Photo courtesy of http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cP3Pd1BRVXc/S4RnpK8cc1I/AAAAAAAAD0E/gvEpjN8QQBc/s400/smile+dog.bmp

How To Make Money on Your Old Phones

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.


The following is a guest post. Enjoy! 

How about you all? Have you gotten a new phone recently? How did you handle either disposing of or recycling your old phone?


Did you sell it somewhere or exchange it at your mobile phone carrier store for an upgrade?   


Share your experiences by commenting below!

Jacob’s Thoughts – Listed below are my random thoughts as I was reading this article.

• Interesting article here, especially with how many people I know did either get their first Smart Phone, or at least upgraded their phone, this Christmas!
• @ The market for recycling old phones – 
  • Since phones have become so much more advanced in recent years, they are really more like small computers instead of just phones (like they probably used to be).
  • And, I never really considered (until now) of how much value they probably still have because of their internal components even after you are “finished” with a certain model and have upgraded.
  • In fact, I never really thought about the “second hand phone” market at all, come to think of it!
• @ My experiences with upgrading or replacing my cell phone – 
  • In my experience, when I have brought in my phone to my mobile company (Verizon) for a replacement, they tend to ALWAYS have some requirement in the deal that enables them to keep the phone – either you lose your phone contacts if you don’t allow them to “recycle” your phone or you have to give them your old phone in order to upgrade with a contract extension and take advantage of a deep discount on a new phone.
  • Now, I understand why; they are able to sell it and make some money out of the exchange! Interesting!
  • Personally, I have never tried to sell my phone through an independent source. However, it’s definitely something I will have to keep in mind going forward!

***Photo courtesy of http://farm1.static.flickr.com/84/275333689_fef2a7c76a.jpg

Investors Who Ignore Valuations Are Like Overeaters Who Ignore the Risk of Heart Disease

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.


The following is a guest post by Rob Bennett. Rob has recorded numerous podcasts on how to invest wisely, addressing such topics as market timing, diversification, and dollar cost averaging. His bio is here if you are interested in reading more!

How about you all? Do you consider market valuations in putting together your long term investing strategy and asset allocation? Why or why not? Do you feel that ignoring market valuations in your investing strategy exposes you to unmanageable levels of risk?


What do you feel is a safe rate to withdrawal your money during retirement?


Share your experiences by commenting below!

Jacob’s Thoughts – Listed below are my random thoughts as I was reading this article.

• Great post here, Rob! Your articles always get me thinking about what I do in my investing strategy and seeing if there are any places for improvement. 
• @ The conventional approach to indexing / passive investing that I support  –
• In the article above, Rob mentions that the conventional approach to indexing involves an investor staying at the same stock allocation at all times. 
• While this is generally the strategy that I follow and promote, there is one big specification that I want to make clear before we proceed to other points in this discussion.
• While I do advocate staying at the same stock allocation regardless of market valuations, I absolutely do not recommend staying at the same stock allocation regardless of the life stage you are in. In my opinion, this is far too risky.  
• Instead, what I advocate is assessing your cash needs for the coming years, your tolerance for risk, your age, life status, etc, and then set a fixed income / stock asset allocation from there based on your tolerance for risk and time to retirement.
• My belief is that by rebalancing your portfolio periodically, you can properly manage your risk and exposure to stocks.
• For example, just because right now at age 26, my asset allocation is 75% equity / 25% fixed income, that doesn’t mean that it will be at those same levels when I am 55.
• Got it? Right! Let’s proceed with some other fascinating aspects of this discussion. 
• @ Why I haven’t yet been persuaded of adopting Valuation Informed Indexing – 
• As Rob mentioned in the post, I have done an in-depth analysis comparing the performance of the Valuation Informed Indexing approach to my passive investing approach over the past 20 years. 
• From this analysis, I found that since the market has been overvalued from a historical perspective for the past 20 years, Valuation Informed Indexing (VII) had the investor shy away from stocks during this time. 
• Because of this, passive investing outperformed VII during the time period, although VII showed much less risk / standard deviation of portfolio value. 
• In addition to the under-performance I saw from my analysis of VII, I felt that as an investor, I probably wouldn’t have the will-power to stick to the VII strategy. 
• If you’ve done much reading about investing strategies, you’ve probably heard that one of the most devastating things that someone can do is bounce around to different approaches, following whatever advice happens to be given to you. While I’m not saying that VII is some shady penny stock newsletter/tip, I feel it would keep me too far from the performance of the market that I might not keep to the plan.
• Just think for a second – would you really be able to hold to only investing 30% of your money in stocks during the late 90’s through 2008 if you are trying to aggressively save money for retirement? It’s likely that most people would not be able to stick to this plan.
• Nevertheless, I do hope that we can one day tweak the VII strategy in such a way that I can become convinced enough to switch. As I mentioned in my analysis post, I really do believe it has potential since VII provides a concrete numerical system (using PE10 values, which keeps emotions from getting in the way) and so effectively reduces risk / standard deviation.  
• @ The current PE10 ratio 
• Just out of shear curiosity, I wanted to check what the current PE10 (valuation indicator) value was, since I hadn’t checked it since I finished my VII analysis in June of 2011. 
• According to Robert Shiller’s data, the current PE10 is 20.75. This is down from 23 during June 2011, so this means that the markets are slightly less overvalued. If the PE10 goes below 20, VII dictates moving to a slightly more stock aggressive “base” asset allocation. During this time, the market has gone up overall ~2%.
• @ The issue of safe withdrawal rates and providing income for retirement –
• (I will preface this section by saying that I know much less about safe withdrawal rates during retirement than I do about the investing / nest egg accumulation phase – probably due to my age).
• The concerns about safe rates of withdrawal for providing income during retirement are well-founded in my opinion, as this is a serious issue to consider.
• In particular, if you had a high-stock allocation portfolio at the time of retirement, I do agree with the fact that you would do well to consider market valuation (because your all-stock nest egg could drastically decrease) when thinking about rates of withdrawal.
• However, I personally do not believe people should have a high stock allocation portfolio at the time of retirement in the first place.
• If you follow life-stage asset allocation advice set forth in books such as A Random Walk Down Wall Street, in your mid 50’s, you would have only 55% of your retirement funds in stocks + real estate. In your late sixties and beyond, you would only have 40% in stocks + real estate. The rest would be in ‘more stable’ investments like bonds and cash.
• By having the majority of your money in secure investments, you actually don’t need to rely on your stock holdings for your current income.
• Personally, the way I plan to attempt to structure my retirement income is lock in a guaranteed source of monthly payments through an annuity so that it is absolutely certain that I won’t run out of money. Then, any money I have invested in stocks, bonds, and cash will be separated from the income source. 
• By doing this, I could simulate how people still in the working stage of life have an income source separated from their investments.
• Overall, if you are using an annuity or another instrument to lock in your retirement income, I do not believe that you need to consider market valuations in your nest egg withdrawals or investment strategy (reasoning would be similar to that used above) during retirement. You are simply wanting to attempt to grow some of your money for your later retirement years and large purchases.   
• However, what if you don’t have enough saved up to lock in a guaranteed annuity retirement income and will definitely need to withdrawal the money now/later from your limited stock allocation to cover everyday living expenses? Should market valuations be considered with how quickly or slowly you withdrawal your retirement savings? Should you use Valuation Informed Indexing in your investment strategy?
• This is a much more complex set of questions, and I’ll have to do some more research and come back to you all in a future post about this!  

***Photo courtesy of http://farm1.static.flickr.com/41/127076756_efb656e584.jpg

December 10% Blog Income Give Back Charity Drop

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.

A little over a week ago, the points were tallied from the My Personal Finance Journey December 10% Blog Income Give Back. Our Grand Prize winner was Greg K. As such, last Sunday (January 8th, 2012), $37.26 in cash was transferred via PayPal to Greg K. A big thanks to everyone for participating in the December Give Back event!  

Having processed the the blog reader portion of the December give back, it was time to turn my attention to the question of which of the 9 local charities listed below would receive the $38.00 charity portion of the give back.

• Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Virginia
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Blue Ridge
• The Nature Conservancy
• Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville
• Meals on Wheels of Charlottesville-Albemarle
• United Way Thomas Jefferson Area  
• Sexual Assault Resource Agency
• Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA 
• Alzheimer’s Association of Central and Western Virginia  

After asking our Grand Prize winner, Greg K., which charity he wanted to see receive the $38 donation, he informed me that his choice was the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Blue Ridge. To me, it sure sounded like a great cause I could get behind and would be happy to support.  

So, on Friday of this past week, I took a lunch break at the lab and ventured off on my bike to drop off the donation at the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Blue Ridge office in downtown Charlottesville.


It was a nice clear January day out, and even with it being a little blustery/windy, it made for a pleasant break during lunch. After biking the ~2 miles from the University where I work to the downtown area, I arrived at the specified office location address (see picture below). The office is located in a very pleasant location in the heart of downtown Charlottesville directly above a popular local bar/restaurant, Zocalo.  

Upon arriving, I didn’t know quite what to expect as far as what type of facility and/or office they would have. After getting only slightly lost in the upstairs office corridors, I eventually found the entrance to their office (see picture below) above The Downtown Mall.

Upon entering, I met Becky, Director of Programs for the Central Blue Ridge branch, and handed her the donation check. 


She explained to me a little about the background of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Blue Ridge chapter, including how they had recently moved locations from Waynesboro to Charlottesville to centralize their chapter operations after losing nearly half of their operating budget for the 2012 fiscal year as a result of government cutbacks on a three year federal grant they were receiving.

Challenges Facing the Central Blue Ridge Chapter of The Big Brothers Big Sisters

Additionally, she told me that the two primary challenges the Central Blue Ridge Chapter is currently facing is:

• 1) Getting male volunteers interested in being matched as Big Brothers, and 
• 2) Tight funding due to the issue mentioned in the previous paragraph. 

I found the first issue (having MANY MORE females than males volunteers as “Bigs,” as the mentors are called) fairly intriguing. Indeed, when I stop and think about my friends and family that have volunteered to be part of Big Brothers Big Sisters, they have all been girls/women as well. Therefore, this may be an indication that many chapters face this same issue.


Personally, I can think of three possible reasons why Big Brothers Big Sisters sees more females than males as volunteers. 

• First, it could be that women are simply more apt to be volunteers (regardless of the type of organization), and therefore, it’s more likely from a shear numbers perspective that more women will show up to help.
• I know that for me personally, even though I am very good at donating 5-10% of my own money to charity each year and doing fundraisers for charity, I do VERY LITTLE actual volunteer work that involves me donating my time (unless I am using that time to raise money for my fundraiser) since I feel like I don’t have much free time at the end of the day and my work related activities are sufficient to satisfy my “making a difference” life value. However, I do wish I could do more volunteer work at some point! 
• Nevertheless, the primary volunteer work I have done where no money fundraising was involved was 1) helping to walk dogs at the local SPCA here in Virginia and 2) being a dog foster at a dog rescue when I lived in Pennsylvania. In both of these organizations, I would say that about 90% of the other volunteers were women. While I’m not certain that we can make universal claims based on my limited volunteering experience, it is a striking result nonetheless. 
• Second, it could be that guys are not attracted to being a Big Brother because they are afraid it will make them look too “non-manly” and “soft” in some way or another. 
• Third, it could be that more women than men are attracted to being a Big in order to practice some of the skills that would be involved in being a parent (if they don’t currently have a child and want one).

How about you all? In your area, do you think more women than men volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters? If so, why do you think this is? 


Also – in general, have you found that women are more apt to volunteer their time and/or money in general than men? Why do you feel this occurs?

Additional Information About Big Brothers Big Sisters Central Blue Ridge

In addition to obtaining some great information from the office staff, I also received a brochure that contained some cool statistics about the chapter as well.


A few of these statistics are listed below:

• 90% of every Dollar donated goes directly to making and supporting Big-Little matches.
• Chapter has been running for 30 years in the local area. 
• 77% of Little’s who have reached adulthood reported that they did better in school after the mentoring program.
• For every $1 invested in Big Brothers Big Sisters, communities see a $3.28 benefit through reduced crime.

Overall, it was a truly great experience to see that what we do here at My Personal Finance Journey can have a real life impact. Through this charity give back that you all have helped to make possible, we are able to help another child get matched with a mentor and increase their chances to succeed in life. 


So, thank you all for helping with this journey, and remember to always live for a higher purpose and ask yourself what more you can do to help others.

Happy 2 Year Birthday to My Personal Finance Journey!

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.

Happy Monday folks! Just a quick post here this afternoon to announce that today marks the official 2 year birthday of My Personal Finance Journey! Wooohooo!

It all started 730 days ago with a simple little post about a $30 sign up bonus offer for the Chase Amazon Credit Card. Coincidentally, I still have that credit card and use it for all of my Amazon purchases. It provides a pretty nice cash back feature too!

Since that first post on January 16th, 2010, here at My Personal Finance Journey, we’ve had about 115,000 visitors and 521 total posts. It’s been a great ride, and I look forward to another success year of learning and interacting from all of you.

To celebrate reaching the 2 year mark on this site, I’m giving away $196 as part of the ongoing monthly 10% blog income give back project. Be sure to hop on over to that post to enter to win and help a charity all at the same time!

Thanks again for all your support!

Jacob

***Photo courtesy of http://images.cdn.fotopedia.com/skambalu-04540b8d817365b83e0878d99b53b735-hd.jpg

Blogging and Personal Goal Setting for the 2012 New Year

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.


With this being a new year and all, I’ve decided to lay out some personal goals for my life in general and blogging goals for My Personal Finance Journey during 2012. I have also added a reminder on my Outlook calendar to track our progress pertaining to these goals each month (or as often as I have time for anyway!).

As I experienced in 2011, (click the following link to view my 2011 blogging goals and year-end progress updates) by tracking these goals each month, it provides us with more accountability and visibility to what we are doing and where we want to go with this community/blog and in my life.


As is the case with many things in life (including my 2012 financial goals which I laid out recently), a good portion of my blogging goals are long-term commitments requiring attention in each passing year. As such, you might see many similar goals that I was trying to or did achieve in 2011 listed for 2012. I am perfectly fine with having some of the same goals year-to-year, provided that I believe in the causes they represent (which I ponder each year, and all of the ones listed below definitely do meet that criteria!). Nevertheless, I’ve tried to call attention to completely new blogging goals for 2012 by highlighting them in bold red text for easier reading. 

In addition, my personal goals for 2012 are as follows:

1. Get to bed at midnight and wake up earlier, instead of staying up until 2 am working on various projects.
2. Take 1 day off per week (Saturday or Sunday) completely from doing work on my blog or from my graduate research job to keep my mind feeling more “fresh.”
3. Become better at following the Getting Things Done email/workflow management system to focus my time and energy on high value projects first and avoid distractions. 

• Towards the end of 2011, I started getting between 100-200 emails total per day relating to blogging and communications from my graduate research job. 
• When I used to have a full time engineering job, I had a totally separate computer and email account that would not even allow me to access my home email (which I saw as a very good thing). However, with the way my current job is set up, I use the same computer for blogging and my full time job. 
• So, unless I am careful, it is easy to be disturbed during the day by blogging emails since there are more requests coming my way than I have time to respond to. 
• To help with this, the Getting Things Done system dictates that you only download/look at your email 1-2 times per day so that your focus remains in tact. 
• It’s actually a really fascinating “occurrence” because up to now in my life, my responsibilities/involvement have been limited enough that I could generally accomplish everything that was coming at me to get done in a day. However, now, for the first time in my life, I have to pro-actively prioritize what I get involved in and be aware of what I am/am not able to do (even though I would like to do it if I had more time). I’m not sure if this makes sense, but since it’s one of my goals for 2012, I figured it merited a little explanation.

How about you all? What blogging/personal/professional goals have you set for yourself in 2012? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://i.images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-3922312417-hd/Argentina/Sport/Football/Lionel_Messi/Joan_Gamper_Trophy.jpg

What Would Be The Best and Worst Jobs in the World?

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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This post was written by me and published originally 3 months ago at Family Money Values as part of the 12th “Yakezie blog swap” where members of the Yakezie Personal Finance Blogging Network pair up and exchange guest postings on a common topic. The topic of this blog swap was to discuss what each of us thinks would be the best AND worst jobs in the world.

In my opinion, the most “awesome/coolest” job in the world would be to work as a travel writer for Lonely Planet (or any of the other major travel guide companies such as Frommers, Eye Witness, Fodors, etc for that matter).

What does this job entail exactly?

Well, these guidebook writers (or authors as they term them on the Lonely Planet job description website) are the ones that review, describe, rate, and recommend/not recommend all of the travel, lodging, restaurant, and entertainment venues in each and every city listed in the guidebooks we all depend greatly upon when traveling abroad. I remember that when I was studying abroad in Spain in 2008, I had my travel guidebook within arm’s reach at all times, almost like it was my security blanket!

What makes this job sound so awesome to me?

For most of my life, I’ve had a strong desire and affinity for traveling to new places and seeing how different cultures live. Indeed, this job would offer the chance to be paid for doing something I love – traveling and seeing new places. Also, since you’re representing a review agency and/or guidebook that could offer huge publicity for any business included in your final write-up, I’d imagine that the majority of the places you go would pay for you to experience the best of which they have to offer, be it food, hotel accommodations, or drinks. While you’d have to remember to remain objective during this, it’d be an added perk nonetheless!

So, as you can imagine, there’d be some very attractive attributes appealing to me in this job. However, there are also some precautions that need to be taken for anyone thinking of going in to this profession.

• First, because of the “allure” of being a travel guidebook writer, there is a great deal of competition. In the last round of writer selection with Lonely Planet, only 8 applicants were selected out of 500 total. And, from what I’ve seen, the writers selected have to be VERY qualified both with previous professional writing experience as well as knowledge of a specific area of the world where they would review. 
• I just read the author biographies of a Lonely Planet Southwest USA guidebook, and all of the writers had authored over 30 books previously. Wow! Looks like there’s a high barrier to entry! 
• Second, in reading several interviews of past and present Lonely Planet travel writers, Simon Sellars and David Else, the job, while probably very interesting, is VERY busy and exhausting. In these interviews, it is mentioned that guidebook writers typically burnout within 5 years or less from working 16 hour days with very little rest while “on the road.” They are also away from their family for a majority of the time as well. 
• It makes absolute sense why this burnout happens though, right? Just think about it. For example, a travel writer in Mexico City is on the road (probably alone) and is responsible for every detail in the guidebook of a city with what, 25 million people! Talk about a daunting task! They even have to make sure that the distances from the street intersections to the restaurants on the maps are correct. 

What Would be the Worst Job in the Planet?

Before beginning my explanation of my pick for the worst job in the world, I just want to make it clear that I’m in no way demeaning or belittling people that work in this type of job. Quite the contrary actually, as I have much respect for you doing what you do. The point of this writing is just to explain why I personally wouldn’t want to do the job. With that out of the way, let’s proceed…


For me, the worst job in the world would be to work as a ticket agent at a major airline in the United States. And, since I often travel through Charlotte, North Carolina on US Airways, and that airport has had extremely terrible delays in the past 2 years or so, I’ll go out on a limb and say that being a ticketing agent for US Airways would be the worst job in the world for me. 


When thinking about my choice for worst job, I almost choose being a TSA Security Agent at a major US airport. You know the sort – these are the airports with the 45 minute security lines where you are being yelled at the entire time by the TSA agents to take off your belt, shoes, laptop, liquids, etc, and then you get to the security scanner to find that people didn’t listen to the agent, which further upsets the agent. However, I ultimately decided to forgo the TSA agent choice because the passengers are not actually upset at the agents (relatively) when they go through security. The honor of having to deal with truly ticked off passengers falls upon the ticketing agents. Bless their hearts. Read below to find out more!

What does this job involve? 

Well, I think we all probably have some sort of experience in airports and are familiar with ticketing agents helping to check passengers in at the gate and main terminal ticketing counter, handle baggage, load passengers for take-off, and help passengers change their flight plans when plane cancellations or delays occur.   

Why This Job Would Be Detrimental to My Health (Both Physical and Mental)?

If we lived in a perfect world where everyone’s flights were on time and each and every passenger floated through the airport in a state of happiness, I think that being an airline ticketing agent wouldn’t be all that bad. After all, you’d get to interact with a lot of different (potentially interesting) people and contribute to the business and vacations trips that make the world work. 


However, as we all know, the world is not quite perfect, and significant flight delays or cancellations are commonplace, especially after the airline cutbacks since 2001. The result? Many VERY UPSET passengers! For example, as a ticketing agent, you have to be the one to tell a 45 year old dad trying to get home from a business trip to Detroit that he’ll have to miss his son’s baseball game because there are no flights leaving Charlotte to go to his destination until tomorrow night. 


Again, doing this type of job wouldn’t be so bad if people were able to understand the situation and not lash out at you almost as if you were personally responsible for the delay. However, my experiences have shown that since angry passengers cannot take out their frustration on the airline itself, they often turn to the nearest ticketing agent! 


Since I am, by nature, not very good at confrontations such as these, being a ticketing agent would be very hard for me. When I am faced with interpersonal confrontations, I typically don’t have a problem dealing with them in the moment that they happen, but I’m unable to simply let it “bounce off me” after it occurs. Often times, I’ll think about it in some form for several days afterwards. Dealing with confrontations gets me much more physically tired at the end of the day as well. 


In performing a brief Internet search for interviews and experiences of airline ticketing agents, I was somewhat surprised to find out that there were not that many negative remarks mentioned about the job by the people that actually do them (far less negative remarks than by the travel guidebook writers interviewed above! haha). Most of them simply acknowledge that yes, the job has it’s downfalls in dealing with unhappy customers, but the travel, health, and retirement benefits and other responsibilities of the job outweigh the negatives. Knowing this makes me feel better about the people that do this type of job. However, I still think that this role would be one job that I would simply not fit well in. 


How about you all? In your opinion, what would be the best and worst job in the world and why? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellenm1/3541851180/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Back to the Basics: Control Your Spending

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The following is a guest post written by Wayne at Young Family Finance, where he helps young families understand the importance of everyday finances like the cost of owning a dog.

What makes a person successful with their finances? Is it making a lot of money? Investing it wisely? Or, properly managing it? While there may be a variety of legitimate responses, this question seems to highlight another important question that I have when it comes to managing my finances: What is the most important aspect of successfully managing your finances?

In other words, if you had to narrow it down to one thing, what would it be and why? I want to suggest that the most important aspect is found in finances 101. In fact, one of the most basic lessons is the most vital thing to being responsible with your finances. Here’s why.

Why Going Back to the Basics is Important

If you have been responsible for your finances for years, you may think that you have your bases covered. You are probably more concerned about getting a large bonus from your employer or maximizing your investments for retirement as opposed to budgeting or reducing your expenses. Anyone who has experience with managing their finances is likely to think this way.

The more experienced individuals have been around the block more than a couple times and know everything about getting good deals on this item or this or that. Yet, the problem with thinking this way is that it assumes that once you learn something about finances, you don’t need to cover it again. This view sees finances as knowing a list of items, that immediately leads them on to the next more exciting thing. What tends to happen, however, is that these individuals start to forget some of the basics. For example, some start spending more than they should. They forget the importance of budgeting and then hit a downward spiral.

More experienced individuals tend to forget that managing your finances takes discipline and consistency. Finances is all about staying in control of your finances. It requires continuous work and attention. It isn’t something that you can ignore without consequences. Being reminded of financial basics prevents even the most experienced financial expert from failing.

Going Back to the Basics

As I hinted above, the most frequent mistake of the people that have a lot of experience managing their finances is getting a complacent and starting to spend too much money. This often results from earning too much money and feeling entitled. Another term for this is lifestyle inflation. As you earn more money, you naturally tend to increase your spending because you feel that you deserve to treat yourself. I have seen this happen in both of my older brothers as they get raises or better-paying jobs. Instead of putting more money towards retirement or their investments, it often leads toward more expensive cars or more expensive gadgets. Getting back to the basics of financial management will help both the experienced and beginner control this urge.

Perhaps more important than controlling your expenses, specifically, spending less than you earn is a fundamental element of any financial advice. Here are several reasons why it is one of the most important aspect of managing your finances.

• If you are spending more money than you are earning, not only will you fail to save money for retirement, but you will also be going in to debt.
• It doesn’t matter how much money you make – if you can’t control your spending, you will always fall short.
• No matter how great you are at investing, if you are spending more than you make, you won’t have any money to invest.

Another way of communicating the importance of controlling your spending is to compare your finances to a stream of water. You can think of your job as the source or the spring of water. From here, the water runs to the areas that it is directed: mortgage, car payments, utilities, insurance, retirement investments, etc. You need money coming in in order to allocate it towards certain expenses or funds.  If you are spending more money than you earn, you are essentially re-directing water away from the necessary paths that need water (like retirement). People often go into debt and spend more money than they actually have because they fail to understand the limited amount of money that they have or the later repercussions that they will face.

How to Spend Less than You Earn

Spending less than you make is easier said than done, right? If you find that you are spending too much money and want to get a handle on your finances, here are a couple ways that my wife and I use to keep our spending in check.

• First, we live by the ‘is it necessary’ rule of thumb. In other words, for every purchase, we force ourselves to ask whether it is absolutely necessary. Just by asking this question, I have found that we can avoid many major purchases. 
• Second, we limit the number of times we dine out to once per month. While it is hard at times, this little step goes a long ways to keeping us from going overboard on food. I find that food is one of the easiest ways for busy individuals or families to overspend. While these strategies work for my family, you will need to find what works for you.

When it comes to successfully managing your finances, it starts with controlling your spending. There are more things that are involved in being completely responsible with your finances (like saving first), but without this first step, you will have a difficult time getting anywhere in life. If you are looking to get a grasp on your finances, start by getting control of your spending. Stay diligent with this as you progress to more complicated issues because it is something that you have to keep in check.

How about you all? Do you have trouble managing your spending? What are some ways that you have limited your spending?


Share your experiences by commenting below!


Jacob’s Thoughts – Listed below are my random thoughts as I was reading this article.

• Great post here Wayne! Thanks so much for sharing it with us today! 
• @ What makes a person successful with their finances?
• Let’s see…This is a tough question. But, if I had to say what the one thing was that defines a person’s success in their finances, it would be that they are able to use their finances in order to live out their life dreams and life values. In other words, they are able to use their money to accomplish what they want to achieve in life at a core values level.  
• @ What is the first and most important aspect of successfully managing your finances?
• I would also have to agree with Wayne on this in that I believe controlling your spending is probably the most important aspect of managing your finances. 
• I believe in this because until a person starts to control their spending, more sophisticated goals cannot be realized. 
• For example, until you stop overspending, you cannot pay off debt, save for retirement, save for putting your children through college, or save for the awesome vacation you want to take. You are essentially stuck in the mud, and won’t be able to go anywhere fast. 
• So, even if you don’t make a lot of money, the first step to getting on track financially is to stop overspending.
• @ The importance of reviewing the basics from time to time – 
• This is a very important reminder here Wayne, as it was something I was reminded about the other day. 
• As a personal finance blogger, I sometimes have the tendency to thoroughly research a topic once, write a post about it, and then simply take for granted that I don’t need to learn anything else about it because I have “already learned it before.” This can get me in to trouble since I would potentially miss out on hearing about specifics I missed before or new developments that pop up. 
• A good example of this occurring happened the other day when I was responding to a comment about Roth IRAs. I had thought that I knew pretty much all their was to know about Roth’s – the contribution limits, withdrawal rules, tax treatment, and penalties.
• However, what I found out was that when I initially learned about Roth IRAs in 2009 or so, I was thinking that withdrawals of contributions and investment earnings were treated the same. As it turns out, there is a huge difference! 
• Anyhow, the point of all this is that once you learn something once, keep an open mind to learning about new details any chance you get.
• @ The best way I know of to make controlling your spending sustainable – 
• As Wayne mentions above, a person can learn a TON about managing their personal finances well. But, if they don’t keep up these effective habits, any progress that was made can be reversed quickly. 
• As such, the best way I’ve found to keep up the habit of controlling your spending is to make frugal living a lifestyle, not just something you practice from time to time. 
• If you can get yourself to the point where controlling your spending is second nature (ie you derive no added satisfaction in life from spending excessively), the practice will truly become sustainable.
• Unfortunately, adopting frugality at a lifestyle values level is not something that comes quickly or easily. The best ways I’ve found to encourage people to begin adopting this type of lifestyle is to 1) do it gradually by scaling back your spending in stages and 2) to adopt savings/investing as a hobby. 
• This would actually be a good topic for a future post since it is a pretty involved topic. 
• @ The best way I’ve found to control spending – 
• For me personally, the best way I’ve found to control my spending is to limit the amount that I buy food from restaurants to about 1 time per week. This includes breakfast, lunch during the work day, and dinner. 
• Furthermore, when I cook at home, I try to buy generic brand items to save some money as well. 

***Photo courtesy of http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4049/4258961182_376cf29b36.jpg