PerfectMike.Com

I’ve been a big fan of Mint.com ever since I first heard of it. They’ve been in the news lately since they’ve announced that they are being purchased by Intuit for $170 million dollars. While many people have congratulated them on creating a great product and now reap the financial benefits of it. Others have thought it would have been better for them to continue independently and continue to drive innovation in their product. Regardless of how you feel about their corporate situation, very few people are critical of the product that Mint has put together since they started up.

In the short amount of time since they launched, they’ve added a lot of features that customers have asked for on their forums, one of which being investment tracking. For obvious reasons, this was something I really wanted to see them add, but when they did I was somewhat underwhelmed. And now that I have re-visited the tool, I think I know why. One of the things that makes Mint so great is its vast amount of data that they have. And when the investment tracking first launched, they have very little data. Fast forward a year, and they now have much more of both my data, and everyone else’s (anonymous) data.
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In talking to my father the other day, he mentioned he had a large CD that was about to mature, and wanted to build a portfolio of stocks to beat the interest rate he was getting. There are two nice things about this portfolio.

1. We get to start from scratch with a clean slate and pick whatever stocks we want to.
2. We have a clear goal to work towards. (Beat 4% interest)

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I hope that most people reading this already have retirement accounts setup, since that would mean I don’t have to worry about my friends and readers becoming old and poor and unable to support themselves. But seriously, there are a few things that people can do to make sure they are doing all of the right things for their retirement accounts. This article is going to cover all of the things you should do if you haven’t already, and can also act as a checklist when you start a new job and want to get everything setup with your new paycheck. While I’ve been doing this for close to a decade, in the mean time a site has popped up that documents this process fairly well, so if you want to see a nice diagram and watch a youtube video explaining it, check out IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com.

In this article we’ll walk through the setup of:

• 401(k)
• (Roth) IRA

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I wrote about eBay in May 2008, and talked about how the company had a lot of issues, specifically with their direction. I mentioned Skype in particular and how much they paid for it, which can also be found in their press release here. Today they announced that they are selling it, and lucky for them getting back what they paid for it, and even keeping at 35% stake in the company.

What is strange is that Jim Goldman on CNBC said they paid “over 1 billion dollars” for Skype. Not sure where he came up with that number.

From an investor standpoint, NOT TECHNOLOGY standpoint, Skype can be looked at as the great-grand daddy of Twitter. It has a ton of potential, a large and growing customer base, but how do you make money with it?

What is clear from this move is that eBay’s vision of Skype never came to fruition and probably never could. Their visions of a grand open market place where a buyer could video chat with a seller with a single click, just isn’t in the cards. It would do wonders for their trust levels, but it just isn’t in the cards.

If I were still an eBay investor, I’d be content to know that the Skype acquisition didn’t turn out to be a big negative, and hopefully the company can re-focus on its core business. Four years of holding onto a company, and dumping it for what you paid for it is a decent situation in these times we are in.

I was reminded this morning, that when I went thru last week’s update on my stock holdings, that I left out one of the purchases that I had the most confidence in working out over the long run. Ford! I bought shares of Ford back on June 11th for a little bit under $6 dollars a share, and after a a nice earnings call this morning, they were up to almost $7. My horizon on this stock is much longer term, as I am hoping that they take this auto industry crisis as a turning stone in their business, and continue upwards to profitability, but the news is so far so good.

While I’m posting I might as well add some more info based on this quarter’s earnings reports so far. Continue Reading

I’m not obligated by the SEC to declare what my holdings are, but I do enjoy doing it from time to time, just to track publicly how I am doing. I freely admit my losers when I have them, and try and state my winners ahead of time, so that I am on the record in favor of a stock BEFORE it runs up. It’s been a while since I’ve posted about stocks at all so I’ll just jump right in.

• I swapped Mastercard for Visa
• I bought into Freeport McMoran
• I bought into Permian Basin Trust Continue Reading