Today, I and a few other lucky souls got the chance to break-in a new Tri course. The Kuban Super Sprint Triathlon consisted of an 1/8th mile swim, a 5 mile bike ride, and a 1 mile run. While I won the swimming leg, my own legs were so wornout in the biking leg as to make my running leg somewhat laughable. There were some safety concerns about traffic during the biking portion of the course so it will probably be reworked before the next race. My time of 41 minutes was about 6 minutes behind where I had hoped to finish.
Category Archives: Finance
Hello From Guatemala
Hello all from Guatemala. That’s right I’m training for a sprint triathlon in another country…. yes I’m crazy and so is this keyboard that i’m typing this out on. Some of the keys are just missing. Anyway, we did 30 km of hard MT bike riding today. I only fell once after trying to replicate a jump over a creek that Kevin pulled off and made look sooo awesome!
If i am noticably absent for the next week it’s because I’m out of country, but don’t worry soon I’ll be back and stronger than ever. :D
New Stock Market Record
Now if someone came up to you and told you that they could TRIPLE your money in 8 months, what would you say? Laugh, and tell them “no thank you”, right? I mean A) if they could triple someone’s money wouldn’t they triple their own? and B) if it sounds to good to be true….
Unfortunately, that is how most people think and so they stay forever content with the paltry 1.5% interest at their bank and get really excited about their company’s 401k mutual funds doing 20-25% returns. 25%! That’s like giving money away! – right?
The truth is you can make a huge return on your investment – if you know how. And all I need to tell you about it is 6 easy payments of $19.95…. now seriously, their are those out their that GUARANTEE huge returns in short amount of time without ANY risk and usually want some $$$$ to let you in on the secret. All three of those are warning flags – though it is possible to have low risk, guaranteed returns at lower return levels like 15%, (suddenly that 1.5% savings account not sounding so good?) but that is a different story altogether. We are interested in HUGE returns, right? Now from my own personal experience I have to say that one easy way to make big returns is the stock market. And when i say that i mean STOCK market, not mutual funds. Mutual funds are for lazy investers that what to “diversify” (because they heard that was good) and let someone else manage their money for them. The money manager of course needs to get paid which lowers your returns, but that is really only part of the reason mutual funds do poorly after short term success. Hint: If you are looking at a fund that has had great past growth – realize that most of it’s growing is already over. Which i know is counter intuitive for many people. Again, I digress about things which i will strive to cover later… the real reason we’re all here is for the cold hard facts about how much of a return is possible in the stock market. But first let’s touch on an important point.
Pay Dirt!
Which is somewhat strange expression when you think about it… unless you’re in landscaping or something… but it seemed appropriate for letting our readers know that Microsoft corporation has decided that they are interested in php underpinnings that make this technowonder site possible… And so we’re selling out to M$…. i know, i know, i hear the moans of “not another piece of ingenuity being sucked dry to reduce the competition for mediocre M$ products…” But what can I say? Everyone has a price and mine is 20 million dollars. :D
Gotta Give Em Credit
~5-7-98
Ever wonder about why you can’t get approved for that credit card / car loan / ect? Here is some basic credit / credit report info I put together a while back to answer some basic questions.
Today you can get your credit report online instantly (instead via mail which took up to 8 days) after answering enough questions to prove your identity. I personally like equifax’s reports because you can your FICO score which is what most lenders use to determine if and how much to approve you for. I tend to laugh at most credit protection “services” (out loud at the people offering them) that charge $50-120 a year to protect your credit and give you a “free” copy of your credit report (sometimes more than 1!) “OR” I say “I can go get my credit report for $12 (ah remember the good old days when it was $8 — damn Euro devaluing the dollar!) and take myself out somewhere nice with my money saved…”
Checking your credit more than once a year is pretty much overkill… it often only updates every 3 or 4 months, but checking in every year or so is a good idea — just so any mistakes are taken care of in your free time and not when you really, really, really want to buy that new Porche 911 now, now, now! Not to mention the embarassment saved at your local Porche dealership. (ah the nouveau riche…)