You can hear many arguments why you should or shouldn’t own gold, but I think I recently read the most important and succinct argument for owning gold.  In a recent article on ZeroHedge, Dylan Grice’s views on when to sell gold are laid out for everyone.  The following statement is beautiful:
The reason I own gold is because I’m worried about the long-term solvency of developed market governments
And there you have it.  That is good enough for me.  Most of you are probably saying to yourselves right now, “what the …

Housing is potentially about to suffer a slowdown in its recovery or a full-fledged double dip.  The problem is that there are a few factors working against a sustained recovery in housing.
First, The Federal Reserve’s monetization of mortgage backed securities is set to end at the end of March.  Most believe this will cause mortgage rates to go up since the monetization of these securities has kept rates down.  Pretty straight forward here.  Higher rates hurts the housing market.
As a recent Yahoo! Tech Ticker article (video below) discussed, there is …

Thanks for everyone who took the time to write out a financial plan for the writing contest.  The winner of the contest was Jim!  His financial plan was very thorough and got some good attention.  Congrats Jim on winning the $250 Amex gift card.
I decided, for kicks, to write out my ten year financial plan as well and post it to the blog.
My 10 Year Financial Plan
I think I can sum up my financial plan for the next ten years with the following components:

Sustaining and growing my income – I’m …

Starbucks Corporation (SBUX) has announced that it will be paying a dividend.  They will be paying a $.10 quarterly dividend which equates to about a 1.5% yield.  Not very high, but better than nothing.
I’ve noted in the past that Starbucks seems to be the perfect dividend company since it produces a steady stream of cash flow and also seems to be out of the “growth” phase.
The share price seems to still be high, with a P/E around 35, but as I’ve mentioned before, I love the company and would love …

I have been wanting to be a shareholder of McDonald’s Corporation (MCD) for some time, and decided rather than wait for a pullback or attractive entry point, I would instead setup a DRIP plan.
Why I Like McDonald’s
First, McDonald’s has an excellent history of increasing its dividends.  Currently, the dividend is doubling about every four years.  This is the perfect stock to accumulate over time (and reinvest its dividends).  With regards to the business, McDonald’s is the cheapest meal in America (and other countries).  I believe the consumer will continue to …

Ok, time for a new online income experiment.  If you don’t remember, here are some of my past experiments:

Examiner.com Experiment
Article Marketing Doesn’t Work

HubPages.com is a website similar to Squidoo where you can create pages of content.  Most people would describe these pages as landing pages that attempt to get you to click thru to a product sales page or another website.  Most people don’t write hubs simply for the sake of writing hubs, although you can get a share of Adsense earnings.
I’ve started writing for HubPages.com – you can access …

I recently went through my credit card statements and did a complete review of my monthly commitments, subscriptions or payments.  These are the things that hit my credit card each month.  Too often we sign up for something and use our credit card.  We get hit with this charge every month and sometimes we’re not even using the product/service anymore.
My results of this review were pretty good.  First, I finally cut my cable TV service.  I switched over to another provider and was able to save $45 per month for …

The picture of Pelosi gleefully carrying in her “special” gavel to mark the passing of the health care reform bill might have you wondering what is so special about that gavel?  Well, it was the same one used to ring in Medicare back in 1965.  To celebrate these entitlements, I’ll leave you with the following fact:
When Medicare was passed in 1965, it was estimated that 25 years later, in 1990, Medicare would cost $9 billion per year.  When 1990 rolled around, the cost was $110 billion.  That’s a miss of …