Monday, August 28, 2006

Knocked Out One of Our Goals

So my wife and I have literally knocked out one of our goals, or you could say knocked up. Turns out she is pregnant and though everything is exciting, I start to have all of the thoughts that new fathers must have. Will I be a good father, can I protect him/her. Can I teach them to be financial free so that they don't make the same mistakes that I have made. Well I guess we will have to see. For right now the prospect of being a father is a little overwhelming and extremely very exciting.

Values...

Checking out some of my favorite blogs on pfblogs.com. I ran across the question of the day on
Money and Value . It mainly had to deal with whether or not you involved your personal values in your money decisions. I believe this is an excellent question. Because of my values I do not invest in anything that I believe either hurts the environment or does not give something back to the people. Though I know all businesses are out to make money, I do look for the ones that give back to their communities. Anyway I thought this was an excellent question and thought that I would like to share. Any comments would be appreciated.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

The Millionaire Next Door

So I have finally finished reading The Millionaire Next Door. I am also going to try and link to what the author of FMF has to say about TMND. He has some excellent articles and thoughts. Definately a good idea to check out. So here it is FMF article on TMND .


As I stated in my previous post TMND is an excellent book and gets down to the basics of what you must do to become a millionaire.

1) Spend less than you earn. You can't expect to save, invest, or get out of debt if you are living beyond your means.
2) Be frugal. Most of the millionaires in the book do not buy expensive foreign cars, they don't have thousand dollar suits, they don't buy rolex's. In other words save your money. Don't buy overly expensive things when you can buy something of quality for a lot less.
3) Invest. Make your money work for you.




These are only a couple of steps to becoming a millionaire. Read the book. It is definately worth it.






Monday, August 21, 2006

Slacking

So even though I have been slacking from my posting duties. I have still been keeping up with trying to learn all that I can about personal finance and investing. I knocked out reading a couple of books.


The first is Buffett:The Making of an American Capitalist. Since I am new to this game of investing, Warren Buffet to me has seemed to be a great, out of reach investing hero. The book tells the story of his life showing his human qualities, his patience, loyalty, and integrity. It shows his remarkable success and his views and ideals on money. This book is an excellent read, though if you are looking for investment secrets this is not the book, but it does impart his philosophy, buy undervalued stocks and hold on to them til the stock market reflects their value.

The second book that I am about to finish reading is The Millionaire Next Door. This is another truely excellent book which I was turned on to by the author of Free Money Finance (One of my favorite blogs). The book talks about how most of the millionaires in the country are people who could pretty much be your neighbors. They spend less than they make. They invest their money in some way. They don't buy flashy cars or cloths. They live well under there financial status, thus they have very high net worths.

Both books are truely excellent and worth a look at. Once I figure out how to link articles, I will try to link to the Free Money Finance article.



Monday, August 14, 2006

Missing In Action-

So I have been missing in action for a while. Not that I have given up on my goal of finacial freedom or that I have decided not to document my progress, but I ran into some problems trying to customize my banner. The main problem is that I pretty much didn't know what I was doing and made a big mess of my template. Thanks to some other web blogs I was able to find some sites that pretty much walk you thru creating your own website banner. So with a little trial and error I was able to make my own banner. Yeah! Though not the greatest, it is mine and I am proud of it. Hopefully my photoshop and blogging skills will continue to improve.