I just saw this offer on fatwallet and signed up for it.
You get a sign up bonus of 25,000 points which you can use for a number of rewards. I’ll probably use my points to get a gift card. See here for all the possible rewards.
The annual fee is waived for the first year.
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I went through lesson 2 of Managing Our Finances God’s Way yesterday at church. It was another really good lesson and this time it taught by Chip Ingram.
Chip started off the lesson with similar principles as Rick Warren had done in the previous lesson. “God owns everything, and we are his money managers.”
But we are not only managing God’s money. Chip goes into detail about how we are stewards of other gifts as well:
our time, our role as a spouse or parent, our spiritual gifts, the gospel, and finally the people that God has placed in our lives.
An anecdote that Chip shares captures this idea well. When he was a young and just starting out as a pastor, an elder in his church decided to invest in him and teach him stewardship values. The elder gave Chip a checkbook and $5,000 to spend however Chip saw fit. The elder asked Chip to carry that checkbook everywhere and that every morning when he woke up he was to ask how best the money could be used to serve other. He gave examples like: the troubled teen looking for a place to stay, the family struggling to pay the utility bills, a homeless man in need of food. As time past, Chip began to realize how careful he became about using the checkbook and how he intentionally looked for opportunities to be generous. If was easy to be a good steward of that checkbook, but he realized that his own money and salary ought to be treated in the same manner. Chip had learned a valuable lesson from that elder that if we truly live as if we are managing someone else’s money, we would be more prudent in our spending and we would be more intentional in our generosity.
Chip concludes by challenging the viewer to dedicate everything to God. All that we own, the salaries we make, the jobs that we have. He gives us five reasons why we should dedicate it all to God:
1. It all belongs to Him.
2. You are his money manager.
3. You cannot serve two masters.
4. You can make an impact on eternity.
5. God blesses that which we dedicate.
After the video we separated into small groups and talked about the principles we just learned. For myself one of the biggest challenges is to truly live believing that everything belongs to God. Its so easy to forget and live as if my salary and my savings were mine to use however I want. Fortunately I have an encouraging fiancée who is like-minded and on the same page with me about these issues. We constantly challenge each other in our faith and how we steward our finances. We both believe that everything belongs to God and that he calls us to manage His money and resources. Though God has blessed both of us with good income we both strive to take what we need and then be generous with the rest.
My post on Wednesday about building my own bookcase got me thinking about other do-it-yourself projects. I looked around and found a bunch of awesome websites for the do-it-yourself types out there. Here’s a collection of useful links:
Daily Blogs
Hack-a-Day
http://www.hackaday.com
A daily blog that gives you a new hardware hack every day. Learn hacks for your iPod or for your wireless connection.
Zedomax
http://www.zedomax.com
A blog that offers both do-it-yourself projects and reviews on the latest gadgets and technologies.
DIY Live
http://www.diylive.net
A do-it yourself blog that is more electronics and technology related.
Paper Crafty
http://www.papercrafty.com
A blog that covers all sorts of paper craft possibilities. Learn how to make ninja stars and modular origami.
DIY Bride
http://www.diybride.com
A blog dedicated to do-it-yourself wedding projects. Find tips on various projects as baking your wedding cake to learning how to do calligraphy.
Magazines
Ready Made
http://www.readymademag.com
A magazine for people that love to make stuff. The website has awesome how-to articles and a blog as well.
Real Simple
http://www.realsimple.com
A magazine devoted to simplifying your busy life. It offers thousands of useful organizing tips, quick and healthy recipes, and other useful life skills.
Make-Zine
http://www.makezine.com
A magazine devoted to various digital and hardware projects and hacks. Learn how to make pinhole cameras, altoid tin headphone amps, and a human catapult.
Craft-Zine
http://www.craftzine.com
From the creators of Make-Zine, a magazine dedicated to inspiring and cultivating all sorts of crafts. Tips on your crocheting, quilting, sewing, knitting, etc.
Hack-Zine
http://www.hackzine.com
Also from the creators of Make-Zine, a webzine that is devoted to all sorts of useful hacks. You’ll find a lot of software and hardware hacks are.
How-To Websites
Instructables
http://www.instructables.com
Do-it-yourself tips and projects contributed by an online community. This is an awesome website that is constantly updated with great ideas. The step-by-step instructions come with easy to follow pictures.
Elephant Staircase
http://www.elephantstaircase.com
A website offering do-it-yourself project ideas in both wiki format and blog format.
DIY-4-Less
http://www.diy4less.com
Do-It-Yourself For Less, offering helpful tips and ideas for your home or garden.
eHow
http://www.ehow.com
A more general website that provides concise how-to articles on a broad range of topics. Find clear instructions on just about everything.
How To Do Things
http://www.howtodothings.com
A similar website to eHow, a website that people can come to learn and share their knowledge. They’re still in a beta phase and looking to expand their content.
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Like other bloggers I am a bibliophile. I read a lot of books. I have a lot of books. Once I get married and move into a new apartment, I hope to have even more. Okay, okay, I know that I don’t have to own every book that I read, but it is nice to have a decent collection. But I need a place to put all these books.
Currently I have a mishmash of bookcases that are all different sizes and shapes. I still have some books in paper bags that I bought at used book library sales. The frugal part of me wants to buy a few more used bookcases from craigslist, but to be honest I have never been satisfied with MDF laminate bookcases. They are cheap construction, prone to chipping, and they aren’t particularly good looking. I’d rather spend the money to buy matching bookcases and that are more durable and sturdy.
I’ve been looking at different solid wood options but I haven’t found anything I like yet. Ideally it would be nice to set up three large bookcases in my apartment when I move in and I wouldn’t have to worry about shelf space for a long time.
I’ve been looking at the option of building my own and customizing the dimensions. I found two bookcase building plans that I might try out:
Black & Decker Projects
Popular Mechanics Projects
My church went through the first lesson of Managing Finances God’s Way and it was really good. This first lesson was taught by Rick Warren on The Big Picture, a broad overview of the Bible and money.
Rick Warren teaches us that everything we have is a gift from God. He desires to work through each of us and our finances.
He first covers two misconceptions about money that people often have:
1. Money is evil. 1 Timothy 6:10a “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil”. The Bible tells us that the love of money is the root of evil. Money itself is neutral whether we have much or little. But God desires to be the Lord over our lives instead of having money be our master.
2. Money is the key to happiness. We know that winning the lotto or making millions in our lifetime doesn’t necessarily guarantee happiness. In fact the Bible says in Mark 8:36 “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”
“True financial freedom is not determined by how much money you make, its determined by how you spend what you have.” Ultimately its an issue of contentment. “A truly wealthy person is a person who is content with what he or she has.”
After the 20 minute video, we broke up into small groups for discussion questions. In our group we talked about how content we are in our current financial situation. For me I shared that I have been really grateful for the job that I have and the ways in which God has provided for me in the past. I also believe that God has been teaching me lessons on stewardship and generosity these past couple of years. Although I will still be paying off my student loans for a while, I’m able to save money for my wedding and take care of all my expenses.
In the video Rick Warren concludes with the thought that our finances is an acid test of our faith. I agree wholeheartedly that the way we steward our finances is an indication of where our heart is. I look forward to next Sunday when we will cover lesson 2 - Dedicate It All To God.
February 16, 2007 -
Category:
House
My fiancée was down in L.A. this past weekend and we took the time to look for an apartment to live in once we get married. After some discussion we had decided to look around in Long Beach.
Like a diligent engineer, I had mapped out about 25 potential apartments onto a google map I had printed out. There were a lot of good listings on move.com. Lifehacker also had a good article on tips for apartment hunting. I never thought to add Craigslist searches into my RSS reader. Pretty convenient.
Long Beach is a fairly large city and has different pockets that each have different feel. Like a typical beach city, anywhere near the waterfront is ridiculously expensive. For example, newly built Camden Harbor View has 1 bdrm. apts. (500 sq. ft.) for $1500 and 2 bdrm. apts. (1000 sq. ft.) for $2500 a month. Wow, that is a lot of money.
We looked at other apartments in the downtown Long Beach area but all of them were pretty pricey. But as we went further East, the prices got less expensive, but the buildings got older as well.
Ideally we want to live in a 2 bdrm. apartment that is not too run down. It would be nice to find something around $1400 to $1500. Especially since I’m contemplating going back to school.
Well, I guess we still have time, but apartment hunting and moving is such a pain.
In today’s post I’m going to give you a basic primer to get you started on investing in your company’s 401k plan.
So you recently started a new job and your company is offering you a 401k plan. Great! You want to start investing a portion of your income, but you have no idea how to go about it. I’ll give you step-by-step instructions to get you started and simplify the whole process. I started helping out my fiancée in setting up her 401k and I’ll use her plan as an example.
1. If you haven’t already done so, enroll in your company’s 401k plan and get access to your account online. Once you have an account setup you can login and begin researching what investment choices are available. The 401k my fiancée is enrolled in is managed by Vanguard. For you it might be Fidelity or another investment firm.
2. After you login, begin to compile a list in Excel of all the investment options. This can vary significantly from company to company. The firm my fiancée works for offers 21 investment choices in their 401k plan:
Write down each investment option and the ticker symbol. Also make note of what category of sector they fall in.
3. Once you get a list of names or ticker symbols, you can go to google finance to get more info. (For example, if you look up DODGX, you will find the expense ratio as 0.52% and that its a large cap value fund.)
4. This next step is going to be a little more involved, but I promise everything else is simple. The next step I’m talking about is asset allocation; how you will choose to invest your money in all these various options. Opinions will differ in how this should be approached, but I will give you my best take on it.
Let me pause here and say that instead of selecting your own mix of asset allocation you can choose to invest all your money in a target retirement fund. A target retirement fund is an all-in-one fund that matches your retirement date. Initially the fund will start weighted more heavily in stock funds, but as you get closer and closer to your retirement date the fund will invest more money in bond funds. The asset mix starts off aggressive but with high risk and slowly levels off to lower and lower risk. I won’t get into a debate of whether its better to create your own portfolio mix or if you should choose a target fund instead. For me I choose to create my own asset allocation.
First you need to decided how much of you money will be in stocks versus bonds. A common advise that is given is that you should subtract your age from the number 120. This will give you a percentage. (For example, if you are 30 years old: 120-30=90. You should invest 90% in stocks and 10% in bonds.)
The next step is figuring out how to invest that 90% in stocks. For my fiancée I chose the following asset mix:
20% in Large Cap Blend
20% in Large Cap Value
30% in Small Cap Growth
15% in Foreign Large Growth
15% in Foreign Large Value
Why invest in this manner? Although you can’t determine the outcome of how well your investments will perform, you can determine your risk to a certain extent. The crucial point here is that we are not trying to predict the future and anticipate what markets or what sectors will perform well, but trying to reduce our risk by adding diversity to our portfolio instead. History shows us that having diversification in your investment options helps to buffer you from the ups and downs of the market from year to year. (If your interested here are two great articles on this issue: The Ultimate Buy and Hold Strategy and Fine Tuning Your Asset Allocation)
How do you choose between all you options. In each category, choose the option that has the lowest expense ratio. Why? Because there may be years that some funds perform wonderfully and other years that they perform miserably. But one thing that stays constant is the fees and expenses you will pay for investing in those funds. So why not minimize the fee amount if you can. Some might disagree with me here and ask how I know that the fund with the lowest expense ratio will outperform all the others. I don’t know. And neither does anyone else. You can do research on each fund and compare the ratings, fund managers, etc., but that is out of the scope of this primer.
5. Once you have decided on your investment options, set your contribution settings accordingly in your online account. This is how it looks for my fiancée. You can see that my weighted expense ratio is around 0.76%. Although I wish it was lower, it’ll do for now.
6. The last step is rebalancing your portfolio. As the year progresses, some funds will perform better than others. Either once every year or twice every year, check to see if you need to move around some money to keep you on track with your allocation decisions. (For example if your Small Growth fund begins to grow to 35%, its time to move 5% of the money to other funds that are lacking.)
Hopefully this primer gets you started into understanding the basics of investing in your 401k plan. Remember that no investment choice is without risk, and there are no guarantees of great returns on your investment. But as you begin to understand the basics of your 401k plan, you will hopefully reduce expenses and possibly risk and be on your way to accumulating a sizable investment.
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