Archive for 2009
« Previous EntriesPardon My Skepticism
Friday, July 3rd, 2009Under pressure from newspaper articles uncovering congressional expenses, Nancy Pelosi announced that congressional expsenses would be published online beginning August 31.
It turns out that the date has been pushed back to mid-November due to “concerns” about security and support. I don’t quite follow the security claim, which wasn’t discussed in the article I read [...]
Question of the Day - What’s Your Total Debt to Income Ratio
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009I was looking over our financials this morning and calculated that our total household debt (including our mortgage) to income ratio is .81. By this time next year—assuming we make no purchases on credit—that number should be around .75.
I’m pretty happy with that number—especially when I hear that the average household’s ratio is around [...]
Year-to-Date Total Returns for the S&P 500 and Other Indexes
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009Here is a quick look at the June and year-to-date total returns for the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, S&P SmallCap 600, and S&P 1500 Composite Indexes:
Surprisingly, all the indexes are positive year-to-date but are still way off from their highs. It’ll be years before we get back to the levels seen in 2007.
Join the Jonathan Clements Fan Club on Facebook
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009I created a Jonathan Clements Fan Club on Facebook. If you’re a fan of Jonathan’s work, please join the club. Jonathan’s book was also reviewed yesterday at Walletpop.
There’s also a Larry Winget Fan Club you can join if you’re interested. Larry’s pretty active on Facebook, which makes it fun.
An Interesting Interview with Joel Greenblatt
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009GuruFocus posted an interesting interview with Joel Greenblatt, author of The Little Book That Beats the Market*.
You may or may not remember that I followed Greenblatt’s Magic Formula for awhile here on AFM. I gave it up—not because I think the strategy is bad but because I didn’t have the time to update the [...]
Watch Those Expiration Dates on Rebate Cards!
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009I made a boo boo.
AT&T mailed me one of those Visa Rebate Cards for my BlackBerry Curve. I think it was originally for $99 or so. I used the card a couple of months ago but still had a balance of $8.19. I tried using it again but got the remaining balance [...]
25% of Borrowers Who Received Mortgage Payment Reductions Fell Behind Again
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009For every four borrowers that received a mortgage payment reduction, one ended up falling behind again.
Okay, I guess the optimistic way to state that would be to say that the mortgage payment reduction program has had a 75% success rate (still that’s a “C” if you were using a grading scale). There’s [...]
An Example of Excellent Customer Service from Sam’s Club
Monday, June 29th, 2009A friend of mine is looking for hot dog bags for a function she is helping with. I googled “hot dog bags” and this entry for Sam’s Club popped up. I noticed that there was one one-star review for the product by someone named “Editor”:
These are represented as a “bag”. They are not [...]
Poor Ruth Madoff…
Monday, June 29th, 2009She has to face living off $2.5 million.
I really feel sorry for her. Please detect the sarcasm in that statement.
This will sound cold but I think she should be impoverished like so many of her husband’s clients were. I think we have to assume that the assets owned by the Madoff’s were acquired [...]
Americans Are Saving More. Are You?
Monday, June 29th, 2009The Wall Street Journal reported this weekend that the personal saving rate was 6.9% in May, which is the highest it’s been since 1993.
One would think this is a good thing. But, in a consumer-driven economy such as ours, saving money is a bad thing—at least in the short run because savings represents money [...]