Sometimes, excessive bargain hunting defeats the purpose of saving money. Sometimes, when shopping around to save a few dollars, you expend two important, valuable things: gas and time. MSN Money suggest shopping smart.
Consumer spending in August fell, as did incomes. Blame it on Katrina if you want.
More on hedge funds: They’re not all that wonderful. Once the hedge-fund world is demystified, we find that it’s not all that different from other parts of the investment-advisory world. In other words, it includes a few very smart people who possess genuine ability to beat the market over the long term — and many who do not.
The article from MarketWatch suggests building your own hedge fund, and proposes a hedged portfolio built out of advice from top newsletters has as good a chance of succeeding as an average hedge fund.
This is a tip I came across for web publishers who use Google Adsense. Adsense serves ads based on the content of the website in which they are included. If you’re finding that the ads served to your website are not relevant most of the time, you might want to incorporate these lines into your pages:
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
<!–– google_ad_section_end ––>
(Don’t copy and paste, I had to use special en-dash symbols rather than hyphens to get that to display correctly.)
Anything in between those two lines will be taken into consideration when Google attempts to determine which ads are best suited for the site. Also, you may restrict a certain section of text within the website from being considered. That is done by adding (weight=ignore) to the start tag:
<!–– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) ––>
This technique is called section targeting and Google has more information on the topic.
CNN is reporting that according to the American Bankers Association, delinquencies on credit cards (and other loans) have reached an all-time high. Taking a step back, it feels good to realize that I’m not included in these statistics. It has now been a while since I’ve been financially irresponsible. Sure, I make mistakes sometimes, such as timing a transfer poorly and being slapped with an overdraft charge. But it’s good to know I have my finances in control.
I should be thinking about taking it to the next step. I have an informal budget, but it’s more of the ex post facto sort. Also, I’ve never really set financial goals because I’ve been unsure of my capabilities. On the other hand, it’s time.
I’m setting a deadline of October 31. By Halloween, I’ll have some long term goals worked out and a specific budget designed to rein in some of my excess spending. Shorter term goals will show up during November and December while planning 2006.
CNN suggests the following checks to make sure you’re not too deep into carrying credit card balances:
* You can only afford to make minimum payments on your credit card;
* You’re always short of cash;
* You’re late on important payments, such as rent or the mortgage;
* You take longer and longer to pay off your balances;
* You borrow from one lender to pay another.
