Growing Money

Since I live pretty close to where I work, I decided to walk to work instead of taking public transportation. It takes me about 20 minutes to walk to work, but I think it’s a good exercise. I work in the office and I sit for long hours, so walking for 20 minutes twice a day helps keep my blood circulating. On top of that, I save myself $4 a day from transportation fares.

My primary reason was for the exercise. I did it a few times and liked it, so I walk at least three out of the five workdays.

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I’m starting to like dividend stocks more, because they pay a nice stream of income and their prices are more steady. This bad market makes me realize dividend-paying stocks are very important. I’m still holding PFE, and I enjoy receiving dividends from them when my portfolio was down. Other good dividend-paying stocks include Altria Group (MO), Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), and U.S. Bancorp (USB).

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CKCM dropped from 17.00 to below 14.50 on Friday. Since CKCM was one of my major holdings, my portfolio took a big hit. I thought it hit rock bottom on Friday, so I daytraded five hundred shares and profited off the rebound. Today the price dropped a little. I bought five hundred shares again in the 14’s, and plan to sell it at 15.

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I have an Ameritrade iZone account where they charge me only $5 a trade, however there is no streamer provided. Instead, I use the streamer from Scottrade. Normally, you would need to keep the minimum there ($500) to keep the account alive, but I found out that they don’t close your account after you withdraw all your money. I withdrawn all my money from Scottrade but I am still able to access the account. Now, I have a free streamer and can continue to trade on iZone for some of the lowest fees in the market. What a great deal.

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I have been looking for a good vacuum for a long time. I have wall-to-wall carpeting in my apartment. I need a vacuum that would be easy to use and could do a great job at the same time. I have had a few vacuums before but they were cumbersome to move around and they did a lousy job.I have seen the Dyson vacuums on commercials and read many online user reviews. According to the reviews, many say Dyson vacuums do a great job. One of the reviewers named Dyson, “the Mercedes-Benz of vacuums.” That is a high praise. Dyson is built with advanced technology to maintain the same suction power from start to finish. They claimed, “no suction power lost from obstructions.” So, I decided to buy the Dyson DC 14 All Floors Upright Bagless Vacuum. To save some money, I bought the factory-reconditioned version.

I received the Dyson this week and I tested it out yesterday. I can tell you, Dyson really lives up to its name. After one session, the dirt chamber was almost filled up. My carpet has not been that clean for a long time. Surprisingly, it was not that hard to use at all. I rolled the vacuum around my apartment with relative ease. I highly recommend a Dyson vacuum now. The Dyson made me feel good after cleaning. My carpet collects a lot of dust, and the Dyson picks them up.  I can feel the difference after one vacuum session.

For paying $289.99, I would say, it was well worth the money.

Disclaimer: No compensation was received for this review. The contents on the post are entirely opinions of the blogger.

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I use MS Money religiously and it has been a great way of keeping track of my dozens of accounts. One of my favor features is the online update feature on MS Money to download transactions from credit cards and brokerage accounts. This gives me a central place to view all my financial transactions and monitor my investment accounts. However I find all my banking institutions don’t allow MS Money to automatically download transcations. Instead I have to log into the bank account and download the transactions manually. I understand it’s a security issue and it would be okay for me if I had to only do downloads for one or two accounts, but now I have several accounts that I would have to do downloads manually.

I think it would be nice if those financial institution offer a workaround feature. Perhaps they could offer an option to allow those transactions to be sent to an email address every day or other chosen time intervals. That way, I can download all the transcations from multiple institutions in one place and import them to MS Money. It would save me so much time.

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The market has been performing poorly this past several month. My portfolio is down a great chunk. It would have been better if those money were sitting in a high-yield savings account. I’m thinking of going more towards cash if the market continues to decline.

What’s your view on the market’s performance over the next five months?

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I have my own LLC now. I paid $449 for legal fees to register the company. The most expensive part is the general liabilty and professional liability insurance. The total premium for both coverage is $1350.

General Liability
Coverage Amount -
$1,000,000 General Liability per Occurrence
$2,000,000 General Liability Annual Aggregate
$1,000,000 Personal & Advertising Injury per Occurrence
$2,000,000 Products Completed Operations Aggregate
$300,000 Fire Damage Legal
$10,000 Medical

Professional Liability
Coverage Amount -
$1,000,000 Per Occurrence
$1,000,000 Annual Aggregate

I also signed up for a business bank account and business credit card. This will allow me to keep track of all my business income and expenses.

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