My Favorite Financial Blogs

Below are some of my favorite financial blogs. The only ones listed here are the ones I read daily.

• Investor’s Daily Edge
• Charlie’s Financial Goodness
• Seeking Alpha
• Technical Analyst Today
• The Big Picture

There are some other blogs I visit here and there, but the ones above I visit day in, day out.

My New Idea

Lately I have been thinking a lot about going a new route in life. This has been brought on partially by the lifestyle that my wife’s land-hopping career brings on, and partially by a lot of reading I have been doing on lots of different things, but mainly on investing and starting/running a successful business. The two biggest culprits are Early to Rise, a daily email newsletter I receive which goes into a specific topic on how to run a successful business each day, and Investor’s Daily Edge, a daily email newsletter focusing on a topic-of-day related to investing. Although their are a few ads thrown in with the emails, they are legitimate, and I have been reading them free of charge for months now.

Early to Rise has especially gotten my brain working. Their tips on how to get more done throughout the day, as well as how to stop “thinking about doing it” and a start of “doing it” have been giving me a new initiative to start a business of my own. I have been brainstorming ideas on what I could do with minimal money and my skill sets that I think people would pay for, and there are a few that might just work (HYPOCRITE ALERT: I am a hypocrite n writing this, for I am guilty of “thinking about doing it”, but have started “doing it”!). I don’t want to put my ideas I have out there for the entire world to see, since rule #1 is that if you tell anyone your idea, it is no longer just your idea.

In the past I have had ideas for businesses and even some great opportunities to have gotten in some niche markets, but due to one reason or another (mainly lack of tenacity), they have never gotten off the ground. I don’t intend to make the same mistake again.

It’s strange, I have a nice secure job with a secure salary that will even transfer me around to anywhere I need to be and still let me keep my current job, but I feel like I am being held back with it. I feel that if I gave myself the chance to start up a venture, I could run it rather well and make it successful. Could I fail in taking the risk of my own business? Possibly. Would I do what I could not to? You bet.

Also, there is no need to worry on what the venture will be, although I am fascinated by the stock market and love investing and trading with my own accounts, I don’t think I am going to go into the business of counting cards on Wall Street with other people’s money.

Family Update

Due to a rather hectic schedule, it is becoming all but impossible to be able to stay in contact with everyone on what has been going on in my neck of the woods. Some of you may know bits and pieces of what my wife and I have been up to, but this should help fill in the gaps on any information you have not been informed of.

First off, we are now living in San Francisco, California. We moved here on June 1st and have been here almost a year now. It has been pretty cool. We are about a mile from the ocean, and we frequently stop by the beach to take a look at how beautiful the coastline of the Pacific Ocean is. The major difference between here and other coastlines we have seen is that on one side is the Pacific Ocean, and on the other rocky cliffs. It is quite easy on the eyes to look at, particularly at sunset! The weather here is also quite lovely, for the temperature and weather is about the same all year round it seems. A typical 7 day forecast looks a little something like this: Early morning: foggy, low in the mid 50’s, clearing up and sunny by noon, high in the mid 60’s, winds blowing east 5 - 10 mph, chance of rain 10%. That forecast can just about apply every single day of the year.

As for my job, there is not really much to tell. When we moved to San Francisco, my company offered to transfer me and let me keep my job, so I took them on their offer. Since then, I have just been “the guy in San Francisco” and have been doing my thing. I can’t say I really have much to complain about, although I wouldn’t mind a bit more salary (don’t we all). They are still paying me a Boston salary, with a San Francisco cost of living eating it alive. Oh well, I guess I had better keep myself in line and earn some raises (already snagged one since getting here)!

We recently acquired our first automobile in almost two years (we did not have a car at all when we were in Boston, as well as in San Francisco until about a week ago), and we are excited to make use of it. There are so many great places to see that are within reach of us by car. We can be in Yosemite National Park in about three hours, in Monterrey in about an hour, and in the presence of redwoods in a few hours (there are actually some within a half-hour drive, but the REALLY big ones show up as we continue north). It will be exciting to watch what happens, and I will be posting pictures of things as they happen on our photo site (URL to be released soon).

Other than that, that is about all that I can think of right now. I will try to be better about keeping in tough with all of you, and I hope that you understand that I will have to send out group emails. I am unfortunately unable to email/call everyone individually. Please feel free to reply back to me with how you have been and what you have been up to. Some of you I have not spoken with and/or written to in a long long time and I am eager to know what has been going on in your neck of the woods.

In July we will be in Louisiana, and I hope to be able to see as many of you as possible that live out there. Unfortunately due to costs we were unable to do the Louisiana-Tennessee trip we had hoped ($1000+ PER TICKET!), but we were able to make use of some frequent flier miles to afford a trip to Louisiana.