PerfectMike.Com

I’m two days behind on this blog post, mostly because I really wanted to make my new stock purchase post first, but the stock I am after has had 3 strong days in a row, and a good earnings report, so I’m hoping for some fast money to get out of it, so I can get in at a few dollars cheaper of a price.

Anyways, the reason for this post is to announce our excitement that Wrigley’s (symbol WWY) is being purchased by Mar’s.  And at a nice premium too.  The price is $80 dollars a share, which is about 28% over what the stock was trading for on Friday.  It’s a nice gain for me, since I bought the stock back in 2005, I paid a split-adjusted price around $50 (I can’t find the transaction in my history right now).

I’m forced with a decision now because this is an all cash deal. I won’t be owning Wrigley or any portion of Mar’s once the deal closes.  The stock’s trading around $76-77 now, and the deal is expected to close in 6-12 months.  The dividend is 34 cents a share, so lets settle on 3 payments, totaling $1.02.  Is it worth it to hold onto this, collect the dividends, and the $80 in cash when the deal closes, which also saves a commission fee from selling the stock.  Or should I try and sell at 77, pay my commission and put my money where it can earn more of a return in the next 6-12 months?

I’ll let you know what I decide.

Back in October I started using a site called mint.com to start tracking my spending.  Having crossed the country into the land of “higher cost of living.” I wanted to see just how Stacy and I’s budgeting would do in this environment.  Groceries seem to be more expensive, and gas definitely is.  But what would that come to on a monthly basis?  Well Mint is perfect for this.  Mint takes transactions from your debit/credit cards, and categorizes them for you.  If it gets something wrong, you can re-classify it easily, and even make a rule to permanently classify it how you like.  

I thought it was pretty cool off the bat, but now that I have more than 6 months of data into their system, the service really shines.  I can see my trends over time in spending, and work on reducing them.  Does shopping at costco save us money versus shopping at safeway?  It would be hard to measure larger purchases less frequently compared to weekly grocery runs.  But with Mint, I can look at the monthly spending trends and see if its working.

Mint can even give you weekly statements, and warn you when you are spending larger amounts in certain categories than what you usually spend.  Here is a look at a monthly pie chart of my spending:

You can  even compare your spending to other parts of the country:

If you have an interest in tracking your spending, check it out.  Very useful if you have multiple online accounts such as bank accounts and credit cards, etc

In the first or, hopefully, many stock blog posts, I am disclosing the first ever sale from one of my IRA accounts.  Back in August of 2000, I bought shares of Eli Lilly(symbol: LLY) after they had dropped off about 20% when they had lost a fight to keep prozac from being sold as a generic sooner than they had expected. The shares dropped from just over $100 to $80.  Everything I read during my research made it seem like this was a big blow, but that the company had a lot of new products in the pipeline and would be able to offset this loss with new drugs.

Sadly, 8 years later and the stock just hasn’t performed.  The new drugs have had set backs, or have not sold as well as hoped. I am selling at loss, even with reinvested dividends, but I think I can put the money into something must better.  I’ll be posting about that purchase soon.

Here is a chart.  The little black arrow shows the dip where I purchased the shares.  

So I did a narrative podcast of our trip to Fort Funston.  Stacy put it up on a page on her dot mac site.

Stacy and I took Stuart to the beach at Fort Funston yesterday.  The weather was great, and Stuart even got some rough swimming lessons.  His doggy paddle skills are a bit rough, but from what my mother tells me I was the same way when I got started.  Stacy put together a page in iWeb.  We made the drive with the top down, and this morning I kept it down on the way to work.  Can’t say I have ever driven the jeep with the top down in April before.

Stacy and I went out for dinner and drinks last night with two former co-workers of mine from boston.com.  We had a fun night of reminiscing on the past and getting caught up on where we are in our lives now.  It still seems strange to me that two people I used to work with are now out here and also engaged.  Much like Stacy and I, they started dating because they worked together.  Furthermore, one of them got hired there after I referred her resume to the company, and the other one started at the company when I was promoted, and he filled my vacant position.

We also got to see Los Gatos for the first time.  It’s a cute little downtown area.  Also when we were getting gas on the way home, we saw some interestly(read: bondage gear outfit) dressed women getting gas as well.  We wondered where they were headed dressed like that at 10:30 pm on a Wednesday?