Guide to Managing Your Savings and Investments in the Internet Age

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The following is a guest post. Enjoy! 

How about you all? Do you find that the new technology and resources on the Internet have made it simpler or harder to manage your investments and savings accounts? What online trading or banking platforms do you find are the easiest to use? 


Do you think that it’s almost too easy to monitor bank and investing balances these days?


Share your experiences by commenting below!

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

• @ The benefits and pitfalls of Internet banking and investing technology – Personally, I think that having all of the investing/banking technology and resources on the Internet are both a blessing and a huge problem all at the same time.
• It is a blessing because you have all of the data that investing “professionals” have only a click or keyboard stroke away. Investing online is also easier because you can make all of your transactions personally, without the need to call up and pay a stock or mutual fund broker.
• Additionally, Internet banking has facilitated the competition between banks across the country, helping to drive down fees/costs and increase savings rates. No longer is a person in Fayetteville, Arkansas restricted to only choosing Bank of Fayetteville and Arvest. Now, he or she can open up a high yield savings account online at most any bank in the country, including several banks that reduce costs by only having an online presence. 
• On top of this benefit, online banking also makes record keeping of transactions VERY easy. No more balancing your checkbook like my Mom used to do!
• However, having all of this information and technology online is a huge problem, in my opinion, because it facilitates increased access and viewing of personal banking and investing account balances/holdings.
• While this in of itself is not a bad thing, the problem is that in a recession or weak market, having  so much access to your account positions only INCREASES the chance that an investor will overreact and sell holdings at the exact time that he or she should be holding or even buying more shares!
• Just think about it! If your retirement balance is going down each day, logging in and seeing that you lost $10,000 overnight is NOT going to be good for your psychology! 
• Personally, I feel it is better to only try to check your accounts once a month at least and employ a passive investing strategy.
• @ The idea of savings accounts needing more effort and attention than investments – 
• Personally, I don’t agree with this assessment.
• I spend maybe a whole 5 min per month checking and tending to my various dream and life values savings accounts. I have automatic transfers set up to move money from my checking account, and basically, the only time I look at my savings accounts is to check the balances for my monthly net worth and portfolio assessment.  
• @ The idea that during a recession, one should simply leave their money with an actively managed mutual fund to await recovery –
• I don’t agree with this assessment either.
• First, I don’t agree with this assessment because 70% of actively managed mutual funds fail to beat market indices. Therefore, I promote index mutual funds as the more sensible choice.
• Second, while I do feel that it is prudent to avoid panicking and withdrawing money from your index mutual fund during a market downturn, blindly holding your money in the fund awaiting recovery is a foolish financial move. 
• In my opinion, the safer option is to rebalance your portfolio frequently. What this means is that during a recession, money held in fixed income assets would be moved over to buy more shares of equity in order to maintain the same asset allocation.
• @ The idea of “rate chasing” – moving your money from bank to bank trying to find the highest rate –
• Personally, I don’t agree with this practice either.
• I do admit that I was guilty of this practice back in 2005-2006 when I was just learning about saving and investing. I transferred my cash savings balances multiple times between Emigrant Direct, ING Direct, HSBC, etc as each of them competed in finding the highest rate. 
• However, what I found was that all of the effort and mental energy involved in seeking out higher interest rate accounts, transferring the balance, and then closing out the old account was much more hassle than it was worth. 
• Because of this, what I do now is choose a savings account at a competitive bank and simply stick with it. Even if I lose 0.05% interest per year by not using “the hot account,” I’m OK with this. The ones that I have settled in to using are HSBC Direct for my life values account, ING Direct for my life dreams account, and Dollar Savings Direct for my emergency fund. I haven’t changed from these in about 2 years now and am pretty satisfied.

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/dannyman/4662167556/sizes/l/in/photostream/

The Magic (and Limits) of Using Data to Guide Your Investment Decisions

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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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The following is a guest post by Rob Bennett. Rob’s favorite book on investing is Irrational Exuberance. His bio can be found by clicking here. Enjoy!

How about you all? What type of investing strategy do you employ? Have you ever looked in to the Valuation-Informed Indexing approach to investing? If so, what did you think? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

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

• Great article here Rob! Thanks again so much for sharing it with us.
• I did thoroughly enjoy comparing Valuation-Informed Index Investing with the various fixed asset allocation passive investing portfolios in the post on my site a while back. Thanks also for all your great comments and feedback on that post!
• @ Clarification between the “passive investing” (what I currently do) and “Buy-and-Hold” strategy labels –
  • There’s really only one thing I want to add to this article, and that is some clarification about the nature of several of the investing styles mentioned above – “passive investing” and “Buy-and-Hold“.
  • I’ve noticed over the past year and half of blogging that sometimes, there is confusion about passive investing and Buy-and-Hold being the same thing. While this could just be personal preference in how different individuals define things, I just wanted to write some clarification here to let everyone know how I interpret this subject.
  • To me, Buy-and-Hold is an ineffective strategy involving buying shares of a single asset-class index mutual fund and holding them indefinitely (or until retirement), hoping they will go up. For example, Buy-and-Hold would be if you were to purchase one share of an S&P500 mutual fund and hold on to it through thick and thin until you retired.
  • Passive investing, on the other hand (again in my interpretation), is something entirely different. In passive investing, I elect a target asset allocation (25% fixed income, 75% equities is my current asset allocation) and then initially buy index mutual funds to obtain this asset allocation.
    • As market fluctuations occur, instead of holding indefinitely (as in Buy-and-Hold), I actually rebalance through buying and selling shares as needed to maintain my target asset allocation levels. To do this, I review my portfolio once per month, and rebalance if I am outside of a +/- 5% band.
    • And, as I age through different stages of life, I change my target asset allocation to a more conservative level (higher fixed income percentages).
    • While this strategy is far from perfect, it’s the most convincing strategy I’ve found to-date.
  • So, as you can see, in my opinion, Buy-and-Hold’ing is much different than passive investing.
  • There is, however, a time when Buy-and-Hold and passive investing (in my definitions) would overlap. This would be when someone chooses to purchase a single solution asset allocation mutual fund or investing option that holds both fixed income and equity securities and handles rebalancing for you. Examples of this would include Target Retirement Date Funds and services like Betterment.com.
    • Since the fund handles rebalancing for you, you can actually buy-and-hold these shares without worrying as much that you bought “too low” or “too high”.

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/4396806156/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Why Now is the Time to Save and Not Spend

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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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The following is a guest post. Enjoy!

How about you all? What techniques do you use to maximize your savings each month? Do you have an emergency fund set up? What bank/online bank is it with? How many months worth of expenses do you keep in the account? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

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


Thanks for sharing this article Les! I think that now, more than ever, people are aware that they do need to save. However, what they are lacking is a practical guide to get them started. As such, it’s important to address these issues.

• @ Now not being the time to rack up large sums of debt – 
  • So yes, I definitely agree that now is not the time to get in to huge amounts of consumer debt (car loans, furniture loans, credit card debt, etc).
  • However, I would argue that now, since interest rates are so low, it’s actually a great time to either take out a new mortgage loan or refinance your existing mortgage on a a primary home or other type of real estate. According a recent investigation I performed, interest rates are lower than they have been for 50 years currently. As such, it’s a great, low-cost time to take out good forms of debt on appreciating assets.
  • However, this assumes that you have some excess money for down payments, etc, which might be a little hard to come by with the tough economic times. But, it’s a good thing to bear in mind.
• @ Always remember the account hierarchy – 
  • When you’re beginning to think about opening up a savings account and funding it, it’s ALWAYS important to keep the account hierarchy in mind.
  • What the account hierarchy tells us is in what order new funds should be prioritized as they are received. For example, if you don’t currently have adequate health insurance coverage, you have no business opening up a savings account and beginning to fund it until you have appropriate health coverage.
• @ Being prudent with the use of your emergency fund balance – 
  • It’s very important for us to take a moment to think about what emergency fund money should actually be used for.
  • The way I think about what types of expenses qualify for emergency fund use is this: if I don’t pay for this expense, will either my health or income/earning ability be hindered?
  • For example, if the car that I use to drive to work breaks down, I would be justified to use my emergency fund for these repairs since the car enables me to arrive at work safely where I earn my income.
  • One thing that I have to respectfully disagree with in this article is recommending that emergency fund money be used to fix up things around the house. I would argue that these items are not actually “emergencies” in the sense that your health or earnings ability will be affected.
  • Instead, I would recommend setting up an automatic transfer each month in to a home maintenance savings account.
• @ Be careful what type of savings account you choose –
  • One thing mentioned briefly in this article is that where you choose to open a savings account has a big impact in the amount of interest you will receive on your balance. And, I just wanted to add a little more detail to that advice.
  • For example, if you open up a savings account with Bank of America, you might only receive a 0.05% annual interest rate on your money. Talk about ridiculous!
  • However, if you open up an online high-yield savings account with ING or Dollar Savings Direct, you can currently earn 20 times more (1% annual interest rate).
• @ The importance of automatic transfers when saving money in your Emergency Fund account – 
  • One thing worth adding to the guidance given above about creating an emergency fund is that in my experience, the best and most effective way of consistently building a cash emergency fund is to set up an automatic deduction/transfer from your checking account at the beginning of the month to your emergency fund savings account.
  • Having this transfer automatic increases the likelihood that it occurs every month, and scheduling the transfer at the beginning of the month/pay period ensures that you don’t spend this money.
• @ How much money to save in your emergency fund – 
  • In the article above, Les mentions that $2,500 is a good amount to have in your emergency fund.
  • However, I think a better way to go about determining how much each individual should carry in their fund is to shoot for having 6-9 months worth of expenses in this account. This ensures that if you get separated from your current job, you have enough money saved up to live on while you are looking for more work.
• @ Increasing your tax withholding to force you to save money –
  • In the article above, it mentions that one way to increase savings is to use money you receive in your tax return. And, if you’re not receiving a large enough tax return, you can increase your W2 withholding.
  • While it is definitely true that increasing your tax withholding will automatically take money out of your account and inhibit you from spending it, I would argue that this is not the best way to save money because you are effectively giving an interest-free loan to the government.
  • Instead, I would recommend simply setting up an automatic withdrawal from your checking account to your savings account the day that your pay check is deposited each pay period. This will enable you to earn this interest for yourself.

***Photo courtesy of http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1063/5126344583_9031352c31.jpg

Festival of Frugality # 298 – Funny Graduate School Cartoons – September 20th, 2011 Edition

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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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1. Darwin presents Older Americans Are Going to Wreck Your Life – Here’s Why posted at Darwin’s Money, saying, “There are several surprising demographic and financial reasons why older Americans are set to wreck your life. Nobody’s talking about it, but the outcome is undeniable.”

I would give this article the top ranking merely for the picture at the top of this post (just kidding, but check it out anyway! haha). However, on a more serious note, this post brings up some VERY important issues about how the Baby Boomer’s and other aging individuals will affect the economy in the near future.

2. Mike Holman presents A practical way to estimate and budget for home maintenance costs posted at Money Smarts Blog, saying, “Traditional methods of calculating home maintenance costs can be misleading. Here is a more accurate to handle house maintenance costs.”

The posts you read while surfing the blogosphere that make you think to yourself, “I need to perform this same analysis with my specific situation,” are true gems! Indeed, they are probably the reason that many of us read blogs in the first place. This article is one of these posts. Personally, I have been using the percentage method of calculating home maintenance costs for the past year and a half since I bought my condo. The method described in this post seems much better though, and it definitely warrants me to give it a try!

3. Evan presents Can You Tell One Scotch from Another? Price versus Preference posted at My Journey to Millions, saying, “Just because you pay 50% more for your cell phone service doesn’t mean it is better …just because you overpaid on an engagement ring doesn’t make it more valuable…and just because your bottle of scotch is 4 times the price doesn’t mean you’ll like it more!”

Personally, I’ve never been able to see how people discern a significant difference between a good $15 bottle of a wine and an expensive $80 bottle of wine. Heck, I’m happy just having a $2.77 (price just went down) bottle of Oak Leaf from Wal-Mart for every day drinking. So, this post really resounded with me! Give it a read!

And now, on to the best of the rest!

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***Leading photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/tulanesally/5198784680/sizes/l/in/photostream/

What if the Entire World Worked From Home?

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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 selected as No. 6 in the September 26, 2011 Best of Money Carnival hosted by Boomer and Echo. Be sure to head on over and read all of the top articles!

In recent years, working from home has emerged as a very popular, attractive, and enticing working arrangement. While there are probably many reasons that working at home is so enticing, I believe three are key:

• First, you can set your own schedule. 
• Two, you can wear whatever you want and not have to worry about a daily commute, both of which are enticing options!
• Third, you can potentially spend more time with your family and get more done around the house since you are there the whole day instead of away.

It seems like every day, I encounter additional people that are either shooting for or have already attained this goal of having a home-based business. Indeed, since I started blogging in January of 2010, two other Yakezie Network bloggers I have become acquainted with have made their blog their full-time work. Additionally, I am constantly bombarded with advertisements for new “legitimate” home-based business opportunities both online and on TV.

As I attempt to process and make sense of these inputs indicating a shift in favoring working at home, several questions come to my mind. First, with all this work at home “hype,” I’m curious to know just how many people are actually working from home these days. Second, what would happen if the entire (or the majority of the) workforce worked from home? Would this even be possible? And finally, would I want to work from home?

Looking at answers to these questions will be the subject of today’s post. So, let’s get started.

How many people currently work from home?

Advances in telecommunication technology in recent years have definitely made it possible for many people to work at home, if they are offered the opportunity. Indeed, with the advent of phone conferencing and free conference call services, the occurrence of having all meeting members in the same physical room has even become rare in normal office settings. So, needless to say, I am convinced that people can effectively work from home. However, I was curious to find out just how many people actually are working at home these days.

In searching around the Internet, I found the statistics below about the “work at home economy.”

• A new home business is started every 11 seconds! Wow! I’m sure about 90% of these don’t last long (Enterpaige.com).
• 50 million workers in the US (40% of the workforce – excluding self employed individuals) work at home at least part of their work week. 
• However, only 3 million work from home full-time, including self-employed individuals (TeleWork Research Network).
• There are approximately 18 million home based businesses in the United States, and they generate $427 Billion per year in revenue (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
• Home business scams and fraudulent opportunities earn $750 million each year (WorkingHomeGuide.com). That’s quite a lot of money! I know I’ve been duped in to trying my fair share of home businesses that didn’t turn out to be anything useful.

From these statistics, I personally gather a couple of takeaway messages.


First, if I am looking for a home-based business, I need to be super careful because there are many businesses that do not last past the first year and also many scams out there offering “lucrative” opportunity, where none actually exists. Second, I think it’s important to take note of the statistic above indicating only 3 million people work from home full-time. This means that only 1% of Americans have this full-time work at home situation. Therefore, I need to realize that it will not be easy to readily obtain. On the other hand of course, it is becoming VERY common for employers to allow their employees to work at home part of the week in “flexible work arrangements.”

Could the entire workforce work from home? What would be the effects?

So, in the investigation in the previous section, we actually found out that despite the “hype,” not all that many people are working from home full time (only about 1% of the US population). Given this relatively low current number of full-time home workers, I figured it would make for an interesting thought exercise to hypothesize what society or the economy would be like if we had the majority (80-100%) of the workforce working from home full-time.

Thoughts on feasibility of the entire workforce working at home

Personally, I don’t feel that it would ever be possible for the majority (80-100%) of workers to work from home because it would be difficult/impossible for service-related workers (restaurants, dentist offices, etc) and factory workers to perform their job function from home since their job either involves servicing clients directly or interfacing with expensive machinery only present at the work-place.

Impact of the elimination of the daily commute if the entire workforce worked at home


However, if a large majority of the population did work at home full-time, it would eliminate the costly daily commute that many workers endure. Commuting in this manner can be costly both from a monetary standpoint (in regards to gasoline expenditures) as well as from a time-cost standpoint (many people I used to work with drove 1 hour each way to work and back. Talk about wasted time!).

If people did not commute each day, it would free up people’s day and hopefully make them more productive at their job. According to a recent article by careers.guardian.co.uk, workers in Great Britain drive an average of 4.5 million total hours per day. Additionally, since people are purchasing less fuel, one would hope that the demand and cost of gasoline prices would decrease. This would be a benefit for everyone! In fact, a recent article by WorkingHomeGuide.com indicated that if 40% of the current workforce were to work from home, oil import demand would be decreased by 37%, a pretty significant amount!

Elimination of at-work social networks and friendships


One of the reasons that I am slightly against the work-from-home full-time idea is that it would effectively eliminate the camaraderie that exists between teams of people that work together frequently face-to-face on projects at the workplace. I’ll address this issue further in the following section.

Elimination of a distinction between work-life and home-life


Another thing that would be effectively eliminated if everyone were to work at home is a separation between home life and work life. I’ll address this more in the following section as well.

Would I want to work at home?

As you might imagine, since this blog is called My Personal Finance Journey, I often like to share my opinions on how the topics I discuss either do or don’t apply to my situation. In the case of working from home, I would have to say that I would be in the “camp” of not wanting to work at home full-time.

On one hand, it would be nice to be around my possessions and house all day and have access to home-cooked food all of the time. However, I think that after a while, I would get a case of cabin fever and feel the need to move about and explore somewhere new for a portion of the day. I suspect that this would be the case with me since this often happens if I have to stay home for several days on the weekend working on projects for graduate school. In general, I feel that a mix of scenery is good for me.

Second, I would not want to work from home because I enjoy having at least some form of separation between work and home. In my previous job, they actually gave me a laptop that I could use for work purposes. And, since I wasn’t able to even access external email accounts (Gmail, Outlook, etc), it was very easy to stay focused while at work because my computer used for family, friends, and blogging related issues would be waiting for me at home. Furthermore, being able to actually go to a different physical location makes this separation even easier to create. For example, if I were to ever run my own business that technically could be operated out of the home, I would most likely look for a small office space somewhere away from the house that would enable me to create this work-home life separation.

Third (and maybe most importantly), I would not want to work at home full time because some of my closest connections and friendships have emerged from relationships I’ve formed at the workplace. In my opinion, the connection you feel with a team of people working on a project at the workplace is very valuable and something that I wouldn’t want to lose.

Conclusions

Today, we’ve explored that although working from home is a popular concept or dream for a lot of people, only a small group have actually made this a reality. However, if working from home is something you’re shooting for, I believe it is very possible to make it happen with a little perseverance. After all, as we’ve seen, there are numerous time and cost-saving benefits that come with this type of working situation.

Thanks for reading!

How about you all? Have you ever thought about working from home? Are you currently working towards the goal of this work situation? What do you think the world would be like if EVERYONE worked from home?


Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1026/3169836251_b62772064d.jpg

A Journey of Investing in Company Stocks – From Childhood to Adulthood

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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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The following is a guest post from Jon Taylor. Jon and I have been friends since elementary school, and it’s truly an honor to have him do a post for my site! Enjoy.

Well recently, my childhood friend, Jacob, reached out to me and asked if I could write a guest article on his financial blog. He asked me to discuss my experiences as a company stock owner and specifically my role with owning Apple stock. Especially with the recent departure of Steve Jobs, I felt such an article would be appropriate.

How I Got Started Investing in Stocks

Getting into stocks really came to me by accident. While I was young, I was privileged to have my grandparents purchase some Wal-Mart company stock for me. Since I was too young to be interested in stocks, it was a non issue, and I never paid any attention to it.

My Experiences Investing in Apple

It wasn’t until 2005, my first year of college, that I started getting back into stocks. Due to my job being an Apple Specialist, I was always familiar with Apple’s products and how well they were doing as a company. For nothing other than an emotional attachment to the company, I had decided I wanted to purchase some Apple stock.

After looking at my Wal-Mart history it was evident that the stock had only devalued since it was given to me when I was young. I decided to cut my losses, sell all my Wal-Mart stock and put it towards Apple.

At this time, I started getting more into stocks and testing the waters about what other gems might be out there. Unfortunately, there was no industry that I understood better than Apple’s so any new stock purchases were a gamble for me. I invested in companies like Starbucks, Heely’s, Divx, which all proved to be losers in my portfolio. There’s a quote in the stock world, “invest in what you know” and I had decided it was time to do that.

Apple was riding the success of the iPod and a booming Mac business when I decided to stop buying any other stocks and stick to Apple. Investing in a company that I had full faith in allowed my conscience to be at ease and not feel like I’m gambling with companies.

Apple’s Stock Takes Off

Two years later it was 2007 and Apple had risen 280% and I finally made my second buy in. While Wall St. was clamoring that Apple is over valued and it can’t possibly go any higher, I was fully confident with my buy in. Knowing that Apple had a new product in the pipeline, the iPhone, it was a no brainer that Apple would continue its success. I knew that when Apple enters a new market, they do it because they can do it better than existing competition. With the successful launch of the iPhone later that year, I ended up buying back two more times over the passing year.

It wasn’t until 2009 that I decided to take my first profits off the table. My current investment was up 435% and I sold off about 19%. My stock broker always cringed at my lack of diversification but the results couldn’t be ignored. I had stuck to what I knew and it treated me well. With all my buy ins and sales thus far, my Apple stock currently stands at a 280% overall return.

The iPad has proven to be one of their best creations. With being in the sales industry, I have never seen a product that has produced as many smiles amongst all walks of life then the iPad. It has truly become a game changer in the electronics world and people who disagree with that just aren’t paying attention. While Apple does have good competition from Android in the phone industry, I don’t think anyone will come close to Apple in the tablet market. I predict the iPad will be much like the iPod market in which Apple dominated. Even with the stock floating around $400 I still feel it’s a good buy. While people might think it is too high, it will continue to go higher and iPhone, iPad and Mac sales are all on the rise and out performing their peers.

How Will Apple Do Without Steve Jobs?

As for Apple currently, I think they will be just fine. Tim Cook (the new CEO) has had a very significant role in Apple’s recent success, especially since Job has been ill. Tim has helped Apple secure high profit margins and has streamlined logistics. Steve Jobs is wise enough to have surrounded himself with excellent people whom his vision has been instilled. As Jon Gruber said, Jobs best creation was not Apple’s products, but Apple itself. Companies road maps are usually five years out and Apple will continue its success with Cook at the helm.

Unfortunately it is impossible to replace someone like Steve Jobs. It’s sad to think of Apple without him but it’s hard to ignore. While Steve is chairman of the board, things won’t change too much. Either way we will all have to sit back and see how Apple performs with the new CEO.

Jacob, it’s been great to talk with you and thanks for having me for this discussion. If you have any questions let me know, and I can answer them in the comments section.

How about you all? How do you feel Apple will fair without Steve Jobs at the helm? What age did you start investing in stocks? Do you feel that your parents (or grandparents) gave you a good financial head start to life? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

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


First off, I just want to say “thanks” to Jon for sharing his experiences with us! Very interesting stuff!

• @ Giving your children (or grandchildren) a financial head start in life by purchasing shares of stock for them –
• As I’ve mentioned before in several posts, there are many things parents can do to give their children a financial head start in life. 
• One of my favorite ways that I’ve discussed in these past posts is for parents to buy a single share of stock for their children in a company in which they would likely be interested. For example, a parent could buy a share of stock in a company such as Disney, Mattel, or even Kellogg (for their favorite cereal; who doesn’t love Fruit Loops, after all!?). Parents can then use this share of stock as a way to capture their childrens’ interest and teach them about financial skills and concepts.
• In Jon’s case, his grandparents bought him a share of Wal-Mart stock. While this might not have been the best choice to “attract” Jon’s interest as a young child, it probably was chosen because Wal-Mart is a very strong company, and they were hoping it would make him some money by the time he was an adult.
• While this is a great thing to do, I would propose that as a child, it is probably more important to begin to learn financial skills than to simply have money accumulated for them once they are older. For this reason, I suggest that parents buy company stocks that children would have an interest in learning about finances with, in addition (or prior) to simply saving money for them to use later in life.
• One quick question for Jon before I get on to my other comments – What age did your grandparents purchase the first share of Wal-Mart stock? I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts about if you think they should have waited or bought the share of stock sooner?
• @ Investing in individual companies you know vs. investing in a passive investing portfolio of index mutual funds – 
• As I was reading this article, I began to think about a possible issue/question that could arise.
• On one hand, there’s no denying that some individuals, such as Jon here, have had great success in investing in individual stocks of companies with which they are very familiar. 
• So, this might beg the question – should everyone simply invest in individual stocks of companies they are intimately familiar with? 
• While there probably would be much debate as to how this question should be answered, given what I have experienced thus far in investing, I would say that the answer is, “no.”
• There are several reasons that I answer in this way. 
• First, I believe that stellar performances such as the one Jon experienced here are exceptions, not the rule/norm. What I mean by this is that for every single experience such as the one Jon detailed here, there are likely hundreds (maybe even thousands) of losses in equal magnitude experienced by other individual investors in other stocks.
• Second, I feel that the majority of people should not invest only in individual company stocks because they lack the self-discipline to resist selling in times when the financial media claims the stock is highly overvalued.
• Third, I would argue that even if person knows a company inside and out and is aware of the superiority of the products in the pipeline, the company’s long term stock performance can still suffer from factors that are somewhat outside your realm of knowledge. For example, the industry I am most familiar with is the biotech/pharmaceutical industry, having worked in it for several years now. However, I would not invest only in individual companies in this industry because even if I knew that a company had a great pipeline of drugs, a lawsuit on a product’s safety profile or unfavorable FDA inspection could result in instant devaluation of the company’s stock and could last for many years.
• Fourth, in the finance books I have read over the past 5 years or so, multiple studies have indicated that the occurrence of active management (so employing an investing strategy of buying/selling individual stocks) outperforming the market indices decreases drastically over the long term (20 years or more). What this means is that while it might be possible for someone to outperform the market by selecting individual stocks over a 5-6 year period, the odds become increasingly less favorable for creating a long-term investing strategy for retirement using this method.
• Because of these factors, I simply don’t believe normal individuals should invest significant amounts of money in individual stocks. Instead, I prefer to employ a passive investing strategy using low-cost index mutual funds to maintain a target asset allocation.
• However, I think that it is perfectly acceptable to invest what I call “play money” in individual stocks (or an amount that you are OK with losing and are not dependent on for retirement).
• @ How Apple Will Do Without Steve Jobs –
• It’s truly amazing to look at Apple’s (Nasdaq symbol – AAPL) stock performance over the past 6 years or so. According to Google Finance, since 2005, the stock has risen 971%! Pretty amazing if you ask me! 
• Personally, I am not sure how Apple will do without Steve Jobs. 
• Part of my uncertainty lies in that I don’t know if Steve was the “vision” that was responsible for all of the new products that came out.
• I feel that if he was merely the one that created the Apple organization and culture of innovation, the company will do just fine. However, if Steve was directed tied to the invention of the iPod, iPad, iTouch, iPhone, etc., Apple’s future success will be greatly hindered since it has depended on new products coming out in order to fuel its rapid growth.

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidgsteadman/3197461036/sizes/l/in/photostream/

If I Could Have One Financial Do-Over…

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The following guest post was written by me back in June of this year and posted on Broke Professionals as a part of the Yakezie blog swap. In this monthly event, Yakezie participants pair up and exchange articles on a common topic.  


For June, we traded posts on the common topic of “if we could have one financial do-over, what would it be and why?” I wanted everyone to have a copy here as well for future reference. You can also view Broke Professional’s guest post on this site by clicking the following link – If We Could Have One Financial Do-Over – Broke Professionals 


Failures. Mistakes. I’m sure all of us have made numerous errors in our financial life that we wish we could take back. However, I don’t necessary think we should view failures as horrible things. They are only bad if we fail to learn from them. This, I believe, is key to success.

How Should We View Mistakes?

There are several quotes by basketball star, Michael Jordan, that I believe capture the essence of how we should all view failure in our lives. These are listed below:

“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

The One Mistake I Wish I Could Do-Over The Most

So, even though I’ve made some significant financial mistakes in my life and have learned from them, there are two in particular that I wish more than anything that I could take back/do-over. These are described below:

• The first financial mistake I’ve made in my life is that on and off from 2005-2008 (when I was just starting to learn how to invest), I invested in penny stocks and individual stocks from the advice of two investing newsletters. 
• For penny stocks, the newsletter I used was Pennystock.com (which, I can’t believe is still active and recommending stocks!). 
• For regular mid and large-cap stocks, I used Winning Investing.com (with Harry Domash). 
• While both of these newsletters weren’t particularly expensive (Pennystock was $80 for two years and Winning Investing was $15 per month), I still foolishly paid for stock advice that made me little to no money in the long run, especially after trading fees and newsletter costs are taken in to account.
• Something you might be asking yourself is, “Why, Jacob, was following the advice of stock picking newsletters a financial mistake? After all, many people do this same thing.”
• First of all, it is true that far too many individual investors follow the advice of stock newsletter analysts who claim to be experts (or may even be experts). Second, it is bad that many people act this way because numerous financial studies that I have read since my mistakes in the 2005-2008 time frame have proven that 70-80% of “professional” financial advisors fail to choose stocks that outperform the market.
• Instead of investing foolishly in these individual stocks, what I should have been doing is investing in a broad range of asset classes through the use of index mutual funds, and using rebalancing to maintain a set asset allocation. This strategy is commonly known as passive investing.
• The only money that I should have been investing in individual stocks is what I call “play money,” or small amounts of money (less than $500) that would be OK to lose.
• The second financial mistake I’ve made in my life that I wish I could do-over is being scammed out of around $1,500 by a “fly-by-night” CCD video camera supplier during my eBay selling/business days.

Even though investing in individual stocks was foolish and I wish I could take it back, I only lost 10-20% of the money I initially invested maximum. So, especially since I am young and realized the mistake early, I was able to bounce back from the mistake quickly.

Since for this blog swap, we have to pick just one financial mistake that we could do-over, I would have to choose the CCD video camera eBay supplier scam as my top mulligan pick. Read on below to find out why!

The Scam

Background


From 2004-2007 (during my undergrad days with no income), eBay selling was a pretty big hobby and side-business of mine. I started out just selling random things around the house – DVDs, CDs, clothes, suitcoats, bike parts, etc. However, the venture grew in to me sourcing items for resale from second hand shops, thrift stores, Goodwill, Salvation Army stores, and garage sales.

Eventually, I obtained my state sales tax ID and was able to buy goods at wholesale prices for resell on eBay. Using this method, I sold anything for a profit that I could find, including iPods, bike equipment, and even Breathalyzer testers! I was even able to claim the self employment income on my taxes one year in order to start up and fund a Roth IRA.

The Trickery

After making several thousand Dollars from eBay selling, it is possible that I became a little too aggressive in looking for additional products to resell…

One day back in 2005-2006, I received an unsolicited email from a seemingly nice man representing a supplier that sells Canon CCD cameras to people with wholesale licenses (state sales tax IDs). His back-story, company description, and website all seemed to check out as being legit, so I began working through the details of a potential deal for him to sell me several CCD cameras that I would resell on eBay.

My contact was very responsive to any and all questions I had during the negotiations of price, delivery, etc, and we finally decided on the price of $1500 per camera. The only suspicion that I had during the negotiation was that he insisted on payment being made through Western Union, instead of using PayPal or a credit card like I would have preferred. He mentioned some technicality about how their company receives payment that I believed at the time (but looking back on it, I obviously shouldn’t have gone for it).

Anyhow, I agreed to send money to him for one camera via Western Union in advance of receiving the product. I went to the grocery store that afternoon to make the transfer, and it went through with no problems. I then rushed home to tell my contact to confirm receipt of the money.

Well, he received it all right! So much so that he felt that he never had to talk to me again! He disconnected the phone number I was using to reach him, didn’t answer any emails, and I never heard from him again. Now, granted that I was a little less Internet savvy back then than I am now, but I really didn’t do much to try to track him down. I remember thinking that I didn’t believe there was anything I could do. I looked around at Western Union’s website, and couldn’t see any refund policies like the ones that credit cards or PayPal has.

So, in fewer words, I was essentially screwed, scammed, and hoodwinked out of $1,500. 

I’m not very proud of it, but that’s exactly what happened. There’s a lot of “shoulda-woulda-coulda’s” I scold myself for looking back on this experience. But, needless to say, I wish I could do-over this financial mistake.

Lessoned Learned

As I mentioned previously, it’s all right to make mistakes, as everybody does throughout their life. However, the key to success (in my opinion) is that we learn from our mistakes.

So, what things did I learn from my Canon CCD scam artist fiasco here (and that you can learn too)? I’ve listed the key ones below:

• Try harder to track down scam artists.
• While the tools and resources that are present on the Internet today weren’t necessarily available when this experience happened to me back in 2005-2006, I definitely should have tried harder to track down the guy who ran off with my money. 
• First, I should have tried to contact Western Union to see if there was any way to trace his whereabouts or get a refund. I didn’t bother to do any of that.
• Second, I should have tried to track down his company’s information using domain registration information.

• Unsolicited email deals are OK, as long as you pay with a guaranteed method.
• I learned from this experience that any time you pay in advance for a product online with a client you don’t know, you should always pay using a medium that enables you to make appeals and refund your money. 
• Good options for doing this are PayPal and credit cards. In fact, back when I was reselling items on eBay, I had to request a refund from a supplier through PayPal that didn’t come through with an order. Everything worked out smoothly getting my money back though.

• Request verification credentials from a reputable rating agency about companies/clients you deal with.
• Thinking back on my experience, I definitely should have done more research on the person/company I was working with before exposing myself to such a monetary risk. 
• A good way to check a company’s reputability is through use of the Better Business Bureau’s website, BBB.org.

How about you all? What financial mistakes have you made in your life? What’s the one mistake you wish you could do-over? Have you ever been scammed out of money by anyone or any company? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4024/4258179346_c3f12d9eb3.jpg

10 Effective Things You Can Do When America is in a Double-Dip Recession

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The following is a guest post by Charles Chua from All About Living With Life. Enjoy!

According to Investopedia, a double-dip recession refers to a recession followed by a short-lived recovery, followed by another recession. The causes for a double-dip recession vary but often include a slowdown in the demand for goods and services because of layoffs and spending cutbacks from the previous downturn.

A double-dip (or even triple-dip) is a worst-case scenario. Fear that the economy will move back into a deeper and longer recession makes recovery even more difficult. A news item titled, “A recipe for economic disaster,” confirms that the stage is set not just for a double-dip recession but, worse yet, a depression and there are 10 signs the double-dip recession has begun.

What can you, as a normal citizen, do in such an adverse situation? I can think of the following ten ways to combat the worst-case scenario:

1. Hold tight to your job and be more productive: There will be more retrenchment as businesses contract. It is even more important for you to create extra value for what you can do. Show enthusiasm and work with your heart.

2. Start looking for a new source of income now: Is your spouse working? If not, can he or she contribute a new source of income? As jobs will be even harder to come by, rather than asking for help, just help yourself by starting a small business. As an example, if your spouse is good in pastry, he or she can start selling their delicious cookies, cakes, pies and muffins. The most important thing is to get started.

If you need some help coming up with ideas for a side-business, search around the Internet for a list of passive income ideas. In your search, keep in mind that with advances in communication technology that are available in today’s society such as online fax, Internet telephone, email, and teleconferencing, many jobs/businesses can even be run remotely from a home office.

3. Cut spending: Frugal living will be the key to hold out through this difficult period which is looming in the horizon.

4. Avoid getting into more debt: The wise move is to get rid of all debt and stay debt-free. Forget about what you want, just live with what you have and be happy.

5. Continue to learn and be more skillful: This is even more critical at this stage to update your skills and learn new things which are useful at your workplace. To be up-to-date is to be competent.

6. Stay positive: Do not allow the negative events to erode your positive mindset. Be sure of yourself, be confident, and most of all, be resilient. You will surely see the light at the end of the tunnel.

7. Stay healthy and fit: Stay calm, alert, and collected by staying fit and healthy. Exercise daily to cope with life’s adversities with energy and resolve.

8. Networking: Do not neglect to stay in touch with your circle of friends. You never know when you will need their help. On the other hand, do what you can when one of your friends is in distress.

9. Hold on to your investment in gold: You are lucky when part of your investment is in gold. Stocks and shares will suffer, but the real value of gold remains unaffected. In fact it gets better. You can count on your gold when it is necessary to turn it into hard cash.

10. Be alert to changes that are taking place around you: Stay in the know and react quickly before things get worse. Subscribe to Google Alerts on topics relevant to you and be notified as soon as it happens.

How about you all? What other effective behaviors do you try to focus on during tough economic times? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

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

• @ Labeling time periods as a recession, a depression, etc – 
• This is a very interesting post Charles! Thanks for sharing! 
• Personally, I find it incredibly entertaining how utterly useless economists are in their ability to predict depressions and recessions.
• I once read that the top economists in the world can only accurately announce when a recession starts ONCE IT HAS ALREADY STARTED! Talk about ridiculous! 
• Additionally, I feel that all too often, people let the fact that the media has labeled the current time period as a “recession” influence their decisions too much. This is especially true when it comes to buying and selling of investments.
• @ Starting a small business for a second source of income –
• While I do agree that a family finding a second source of income is beneficial during tough economic times, I do not feel that a small business is the best way to do this. 
• Why do I feel this way? Simple. It’s a well-known fact that a large majority (I think I’ve heard 90%) of small business fail during their first year of operation. As such, the odds are not in someone’s favor to succeed in making short-term profits in a small business, particularly if the person is already hurting for money in a recession. 
• Instead, a more sure way of getting crucial additional income in a recession is to simply take up a side/part-time job. 
• However, it might also be prudent to start thinking of creating your side business, but to make it a more long-term goal.
• @ Several other ideas I had for effective things you can do in a double-dip recession – Aside from the ideas listed above, I could think of several other important things I try to do during tough economic times.
• Regarding investments, first and most importantly, it’s crucial to not give in to all of the “hype” and panic sweeping around the market. During the 2008-2009 market downturn/recession, I saw all too many individuals sell a majority of their stock holdings very near the market bottom. And, what do you know?! I talk to them recently, and they have since bought back in to the market. These people are doing EXACTLY the opposite of what you should be doing to create long term wealth in that they are selling at the bottom and buying at the top. 
• So, the bottom line is that during a double-dip recession, be sure to keep an eye out for buying opportunities when the market is low and maintain your appropriate target asset allocation through periodic rebalancing.
• During a double-dip recession, it’s also important (as Charles mentioned) to continue learning new skills. To this advice, I will add that it is good to start learning additional skills that can be directly related to increasing your company’s bottom line. Since jobs these days are very specialized, in order to do this, you may have to reach out to different departments than the one you work in and be willing to work after-hours. 
• For example, let’s say that your normal job is working on the manufacturing floor facilitating the release of product. In this case, you could reach out to the supply or sales department of your company and see if you could help out in some way helping them break in to new sales markets. At the very least, your company will be impressed with the initiative you’ve shown, even if they don’t allow you to help out in multiple areas. If you’re going to do this, always be sure to get prior-approval from your boss before approaching another department.
• While this process of reaching out to new areas may be slightly painful, I believe it will pay off in the long run. 
• @ Investing in gold – 
• While gold is probably a good investment to have going in to a recession, prices of this commodity/asset will increase during a recession due to increased demand because of the security it provides. 
• Therefore, it’s important to not give in to the “gold buying hype” during a recession because this will most likely only cause you to lose money in the long term.

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/139818702/sizes/l/in/photostream/

How Can You Actually Benefit from Low Interest Rates?

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To me, it’s truly amazing how low interest rates are these days.

Furthermore, it seems that with each passing month, I log in to my savings accounts with ING Direct and Dollar Savings Direct only to find out that the interest rate I’m earning on my balance has only decreased closer and closer to zero (currently around 0.80-1.00% APY)!

The Current State of Interest Rates

According to MoneyCafe.com, the current prime interest rate decided by the FOMC in their August 9th, 2011 meeting is 3.25%. In looking at historical interest rate levels, I found that one has to go all of the way back to around 1955 to find interest rates that were as low as today’s levels. So, while today’s interest rates aren’t the lowest they’ve EVER been, they are incredible low for modern standards!

As a personal finance blogger and investor, I encounter many people who are very annoyed with how the low interest rates we’re currently experiencing are enabling them to accumulate little to no money in interest payments on their cash and emergency fund accounts. I’m not going to try to sugar-coat things by claiming this assessment is inaccurate of our current reality. However, I would propose that instead of focusing on the negative aspects of the current situation, we focus on the positive effects that low interest rates bring. However, this begs the question: what are these benefits, if any?!

The Effect of Current Interest Levels on Mortgage Rates

In my opinion, the most effective way that regular consumers/individuals can actually benefit (instead of receiving negative effects) from historically low interest rates is by taking advantage of this time to lock in low-cost fixed mortgages for purchasing primary homes or other forms of real estate.

In most of the personal finance books I’ve read, a family or individual purchasing their own home is typically quoted by these people as the “best financial decision they ever made.” Of course, there are many reasons why purchasing a home is a good financial decision. However, one of the key reasons for this is the tax advantages people receive in deducting mortgage interest from their income taxes and being able to do tax-sheltered exchanges when buying and selling their home.

How You Can Take Advantage of the Low Interest Rate Situation – Buying and Refinancing A Home

Currently, 30 year fixed rate home mortgages are being offered for around a 4.2% interest rate, approximately 1% above the prime interest rate of 3.25% mentioned above. In my opinion, an interest rate of only 4.2% is really not much at all (i.e. very cheap!), especially when you consider 1) that equities have returned an average of ~10% per year over the history of the stock market and 2) savings accounts were earning around 5% APY interest in 2005. As such, if you’ve been delaying purchasing a home for several years, now is a great time to “pull the trigger” and purchase while interest rates are low.

Another aspect of the “financial puzzle” to consider is the possibility of refinancing your home. At a high level, refinancing makes sense when you bought your house (and subsequently took out a mortgage loan) during a historically high interest rate period. For example, if I bought a house in the year 2000 when interest rates were around 10-11%, and I still had a significant amount of the loan outstanding, it would potentially save me thousands of Dollars to refinance my home now to take advantage of interest rates that are almost 50% reduced.

As a quick example of the magnitude of savings that are possible with refinancing, let’s assume that I still had $150,000 left to pay off on my mortgage that I took out for my $1.5 million McMansion I bought in 2000. If I refinanced from the 11% interest loan to a new 4.2% interest loan, it would mean that I would pay approximately $10,000 less in interest per year. If you ask me, that’s definitely worth the time to go through the refinancing process. Of course, prior to going through the refinancing process, you’ll want to check if in your situation, the fees that you’ll pay to make the transition won’t degrade the benefits you’ll receive in interest savings.

How about you all? How have the low interest rates in recent years affected you? Have you done anything to take advantage of the situation? Have you ever gone through the mortgage refinancing process? Are there any hidden fees that were encountered?  


Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/jawspeak/213150426/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Couponology – Online Coupon Screening Resource

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If you’ve stopped by my blog before, you probably have picked up that I am a very frugal (maybe even cheap!) person. I enjoy saving money and am fairly effective at doing so.

However, one thing that I desperately fail at in life is taking advantage of coupons (both online or in newspaper/print resources) for my major and minor purchases. I think part of this failure stems from having convinced myself that I don’t need to use coupons since I already save a sufficient amount of money. After all, if I am shopping at Wal-Mart and buy most all of my groceries from the Great Value generic brand family, why would I ever need coupons to save additional money? Furthermore, I get slightly discouraged by how the coupons in newspapers seem to exist only to get me to spend more money buying things that I don’t need.


Other reasons for why I fail to use coupons are because 1) I think that the coupons for things I actually need to buy will not be available or 2) finding these targeted coupons will take far too much time. Because of these reasons, I am always on the lookout for new, improved resources that will make coupons for products I need more accessible and easier to use. Recently, I’ve been exposed to a new online coupon website/resource that meets these qualifications. The website is called Couponology.com.

Upon checking out their site, I found that Couponology offers the following features for screening through the overwhelming thousands of coupons available on the Internet to enable you to find ones that you actually need.

• Coupons by Store: This is exactly what it sounds like, with stores listed alphabetically. You’ll find coupon codes for many of the stores you probably shop at, including Staples, Eastbay, and Home Depot. You will also find Bath and Body Works coupon codes on the site. 
• Truthfully, I was quite impressed by the sheer number of stores they have listed for coupons in their directory (~500). 
• They also have a feature that enables coupon shoppers to request that additional stores be added.

• Coupons by Category: Sorting coupons by different categories proves useful when a shopper, for example, knows that he or she wants to buy a grill or some other type of home/garden hardware. However, he or she doesn’t care what store it is from (just wants the best deal available). 
• Categories include Professional Services, Entertainment, Apparel & Accessories, Sporting Goods, Food & Groceries, Travel & Tourism, and all points in between.

• Best Online Coupons: From the looks of this sorting feature, it appears to be a listing of the most “valuable” coupons on the site. However, what determines most “valuable” is by nature, quite arbitrary. 
• So, caution should be taken to shop around the site and compare prices on other products before buying directly from this menu.

• Most Popular: This coupon screening feature displays the most frequently-used deals on the Couponology.com site. 
• Before buying a product using this feature, make sure that the item is something you previously determined that you need. If you don’t consider this, it can be easy to get caught up in buying something frivolous simply because it is on sale. 
• However, if you are out to have some pre-planned shopping fun, this feature may be for you! 

• Free Shipping Codes: Even though shipping rates have become quite competitive in recent years, paying for shipping and handling can slowly eat in to money saved up by consumers for online purchases. As such, this feature allows you to view the various free shipping deals in the different categories in which you are considering purchasing products. After all, who doesn’t like free shipping?! 

• Printable Coupons: This section of the site includes coupons you can print off and bring in to use in stores. I saw printable coupons for stores like Whole Foods, Sears, and Zales.
• While printing off a coupon and subsequently going shopping at a physical store can be both easier and more familiar to many shoppers, caution should be taken because often, the best coupon deals apply only to purchases bought online.
• Thus, it’s always a good idea to consider your online options before going to a physical store.

• Search Coupons: In addition to the screening options discussed above, Couponology also allows shoppers to search for specific items that have deals associated with them. 
• In my mind, this is the most useful feature of Couponology, since going forward, I will most likely only use coupons to save money on larger, pre-planned purchases. 
• For example, recently, I’ve been in the market to buy a new bicycle helmet. If I type in “bike helmet” in the search field, about 40 relevant bike helmet deals from multiple vendors come up that I can read through. Doing this saves me both time and money. Definitely a good combo!

How about you all? Do you use any online coupon resources to save money on purchases? If so, which ones? Have you used Couponology before? 


In your opinion, do you feel that the money you save using coupons is worth the time and effort?


Share your experiences by commenting below!

Note: I received monetary compensation for this review of Couponology.com. However, the feedback expressed represents my honest opinion of the service.

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/24218656@N03/4589929510/sizes/m/in/photostream/