I’m heading to Las Vegas in about 6 hours for a conference.  I’ll be there until Tuesday.  This will be my first time.

I’m not a big gambler, but will probably dabble a bit.  It is Vegas after all…  Frankly though, I’m much more interested in seeing some shows and enjoying a bit of a vacation at my company’s (and one of our vendor’s) expense.  My only out of pocket expense is my hotel room tomorrow night and whatever we do for entertainment (which will probably not be insignificant…)
One of our clients is coming out on Sunday and we’ll be going to Morton’s Steak House for dinner.  Since the client is there we can expense it.  While I can’t say I wouldn’t ever go there at my own expense it would have to be a special occasion.  There’s just something about experiencing the finer things in life and not having to pay for it yourself.

On Tuesday I was originally supposed to go from Vegas to Park City, UT for another conference (and some skiing).  I was going to bring my wife out as well.   We’ve got a number of launches (web sites) happening next week however so I  had to cancel…  Maybe next year.
I’ll be taking my laptop with me but am not sure if I’ll have time to post or not.  If not, see you Tuesday!  Time to go pack!

So, our mechanic took the Honda apart (we told him to take his time) and determined that

a) It was the timing belt that failed, and
b) It did not bend the valves.

We told him to go ahead and fix it.  Picked up the car yesterday and it’s running great!  Only cost $300 too which is $200 less than the other place wanted.  So we’re once again with two cars and not having to spend $thousands on buying something else.  I swear though, this is the last time I’m fixing that thing…

It’s been a while since I did an update on my portfolio.  I haven’t found any new stocks to buy yet and am waiting for a market correction to come along (and the buying opportunity that would ensue.)

Read the rest of this entry »

I received my $50 bonus for opening the Smart Package Checking account with them. (You had to open a Smart Checking Plus and a Money Market account.) I already had an Online Savings account so I only keep $25 in the Money Market. I’m most of the way through the process of making HSBC my primary bank. All that is really left to do is have my paychecks direct deposited into my HSBC account. Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog has a scan of an offer he received and some other info there (use code Get50 when opening the account.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Thursday afternoon our 1990 Honda died on the highway while my wife was driving to an appointment. I left work and went to rescue her. The traffic was way to busy to attempt to tow it out of there with a tow strap (using our F150) so we left the car where it was and I took her home.

I should have just called a tow truck right then and there, but thinking we’d save a little money I decided to rent a tow dolly from Uhaul and do it ourselves. I couldn’t get one on Thursday but figured the car would be safe on the side of the road until the next day.

Read the rest of this entry »

So I’ve invested a total of $300 in prosper.com so far. I’ve split that among 6 loans with an average interest rate of 13.12%. My last three loans have been to people with AA level credit in order to off-set the higher risk loans I placed early on.

Read the rest of this entry »

First off, my wife received the balance of her severance. Overall it worked out to about 10 months’ worth of take-home pay, mainly because we no longer had the car lease payments being taken out of her checks. We’ve got a decent war chest now. In fact, I think we have a bit too much money in the savings accounts. CDs don’t really make sense right now, we’re getting 4.8% at HSBC on the savings. Perhaps I’ll just move a slightly bigger amount of money into the brokerage account and find some more individual stocks to buy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry I’ve been quiet this week.  One of my employees has been out for the last two weeks (her husband is seriously ill) and we’re in the middle of launching a 10MM advertising campaign for our client…  I should be a bit better off next week.

We received my wife’s first severance check last week. It was for three months’ salary. (This would be the basic portion of her severance.) While it was nice to get a big fat check and had a nice effect on our net worth for Feb it got me to thinking…

Read the rest of this entry »

According to www.savings-bond-alert.com there is a decent chance that the inflation based rate for I Bonds may be negative when announced in May. CPI-U for January is about .75% below where it was in September 2005. The date that matters for I Bonds however is the difference between March and September. The March number will be announced on April 19th so there will be some time to plan.

If the inflation component of the I Bond interest rate is 0% or less I am betting that the fixed component will rise to somewhere above its current 1% rate in order to keep I Bonds selling in the marketplace. There is no guarantee of this however.

For now I’ve been continuing to purchase I Bonds monthly since October. The interest on the October bonds just started posting to my account in January and the November’s posted just this month (there is a three month lag). I plan on continuing my purchases this month and next to get the current 6.73% rate. After that I’ll reevaluate whether or not to continue based on the fixed component most likely as the total return is very unlikely to continue being so attractive. If not, I’ll likely look to purchase Municiple bonds for this portion of our portfolio. I’ve been wanting to look into this anyway for some time to mitigate the tax bite from this portion of our investments.