This post has been updated and moved here – 0% apr balance transfers with no fees.

This post should be posted remotely…

A few days ago, a visitor VJ posted a some good questions and points in a comment in this thread. Here is his post again:

Great blog, and very impressive and logical thoughts given your relative newness to the topic!

I work in finance, but in institutional research, so my knowledge of personal finance issues is slightly limited, but my grounding is pretty good. A couple of ideas/thoughts:

1) My company has its 401ks with Fidelity. Fidelity has “asset allocation” funds which are indexed blends of stock and bond which have various “maturities.” That is, if you plan to retire in 2010, you have mostly a bond mix, and if you plan to retire in 2050, you have mostly a stock mix, and by 2045 the 2050-fund will look kind of like the 2010-fund looks today; they become more conservative over time. Sounds like an intriguing product and I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

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I hate packing, I have lifting heavy objects, I hate unpacking, I hate paying enormous amounts of money to moving companies, and trying avoid all the many, many, scams out there. My wife decided that our trendy loft with 20 ft. ceilings and french doors is no longer working out since it’s is basically one big room with no privacy, and it doesn’t allow pets. So, we’re moving to a charming (a.k.a. old and rickety) 2 bedroom cottage (a.k.a. small house) where I can have my own filthy room and the future dog can have his/her own fenced yard. Ah well.

This meant that we had to break our lease, losing our $1000 deposit. Ouch. And we are paying double rent for two weeks, in order to move things over gradually to the new place and reserve the house. So that will affect some of our goals, but we did sell our washer and dryer since the new place includes it, so that’s good.

(This page has moved here.)

As I start looking into individual stock trading techniques, I guess I need to join the stock blogger crowd and put a disclaimer up on my website:

The information provided on this site is not financial advice and I am not a financial professional. This is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or trade securities. Trading securities can lose you a whole lot of money, and fast. You probably know more about stocks than me. I try to be accurate, but sometimes fail miserably. I can buy, sell, or hold any positions mentioned on this website at anytime.

While I would be flattered if someone were to actually take my ramblings seriously and buy a stock from my writings, I’m deathly scared of lawyers.

Every Apple announces a new product, the capitalist in me says “run to the Apple store tomorrow. Buy as many as you can carry, and re-sell them on eBay. With the profit, keep one for yourself basically free”. Like this guy who bought ten of ’em (not the blogger, the guy in the picture)! And when I was in college I very might well have does that. But now as a working stiff I just can’t spend 3 hours in line to buy toys. I do have an silver Apple iPod Mini that I got for Christmas, which is awesome.

Apple’s new iPod shuffle (retail $99) now has a 2-4 week wait time, and the average going price on eBay is $140. That’s a swift 40% profit, even with the fees since shipping is usually about $10 and costs $4.

If I bought 10 iPods x $40 = $400. If the line was 4 hours long, that’s still $100/hour, which is definitely more than I make. Still, I’d have to take time off work, and I value vacation time at more than $100/hour! Now if I bought 100…

As blogging continues to grow, so do financial blogs – just check out my expanding list of links on the right. And happily so, I do enjoy other people’s views on things and opinions, from Canadian to Urban Woman to Technical Traders. However, there are now so many blogs to follow it’s getting a bit cumbersome. Enter: NewsGator Online. I used to use a free standalone RSS Reader and then MyYahoo to organize things, but NewsGator works on any computer (even my filtered and monitored work computer) and is better organized than MyYahoo or Bloglines in my opinion.

You can rate your posts to save for later, and also check off after you’ve read a post. If you’re tired of clicking around and managing 20 bookmarks, give it a try! The basic service is free for now, and I hope it stays that way.

Ok, so my plan for this blog is to keep track of my steps towards financial freedom. I am still working on what constitutes “financial freedom”. Right now I’m looking at a sum of money, such that I can live off of the earnings without touching the principal. One of the inspirations for this site, PFBlog.com, has chosen a goal of $1,000,000 by age 40. After reading an article at MSN Money, getting a solid number sounds complicated.

Still, let’s try some super-simplified calculations. Let say you want $60,000 a year after retirement, ignoring what you get from Social Security and pensions (a term that will probably go with the dinosaurs). A fair rate for return is 4%, with fixed income-type securities. So that leaves you with needing $1,500,000. Sounds like a crapload of money, huh? Well, hopefully not, but that’s another entry.

Whew! I finally installed Movable Type. Now to get some sleep…

(My first post! December 6th, 2004.)