Pimp Your Finances

[edit - I changed the title of this article to more accurately reflect my thoughts, and also to point out that these tips are not mine]
 
Businessweek recently broke away from their traditional audience, and featured an article of Advice for Young Investors. The name is slightly misleading, as it includes all financial facets – from insurance to [...]

We’re turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to fear – fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts…
- Hunter S. Thompson, 2003
One thing that’s always bugged me about the media is how they pretend [...]

I just read a great article by Ron Lieber titled “Legacy of a Crisis: A Generation Shy of Risk“. It’s about the mental impact that the recession is having on the younger generation.
You did what you were supposed to do.  College. Graduate school, maybe. Bought a home. Invested in mutual funds.
And now? You have student debt.  Your [...]

(The following is a guest post from Mike at the Oblivious Investor)
Want to know how to succeed at investing?
Stop trying.
No, I don’t mean that in some sort of New Age/philosophical way. I mean it quite literally.
Far too many investors waste time and money engaging in what history has shown (repeatedly) to be fruitless endeavors:

Timing the market
Picking [...]

The AP published an article saying that investors are used to wild swings, and are no longer reacting with selling binges.

They tell the story of a few investors who have come to their senses…but are they really good examples?  Let’s take a look.
One investor said:
I certainly had a queasy stomach throughout October,” said the 61-year-old [...]

There is no way to predict – let alone time – the market.  The best that you can do is to balance current financial news with historical context.  Past activity is no indicator of future performance, but its often one of the most valuable tools we have in trying to figure out if the market is – historically speaking [...]

“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much most of the time.  Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd [...]