The Amateur Financier

Hello, my friends.  As I noted yesterday, I’m off gallivanting across the state of Pennsylvania today to visit my family with my fiancee.  For your reading pleasure, I decided to share some of my favorite posts from the past 600 I’ve written for The Amateur Financier.  I’m particularly focusing on the first year or so that I was writing, partially because that helps to narrow things down a bit, partially because I didn’t have near the audience I have now back when I was first writing those posts.  I can’t say that they’re the greatest posts I’ve ever written (that’s a hard claim to make, without some objective standard), but they are some of the ones I’ve enjoyed writing and discussing the most.  Who knows, perhaps there’s a lost gem or two in here that you missed on its first time around:

1. Investing 101: Stocks - One of my favorite early series of columns on The Amateur Financier was Investing 101, where I took a closer look at particular investments in a Q & A format.  Besides being fun to right (some of the questions and answers ended up rather more sarcastic than I imagine most financial writing gets), it was very informative to try to do research in the same way a would-be investor might.  This particular one was the very first one I wrote, when I was still getting the concept down and tweaking it.  Definitely one of my more fun series, and one I might have to revive at some point.

2. Five Ways to Get Rich Quick – On the subject of humor and posts I enjoyed writing, here’s a long ago post that I’m always sorry I didn’t wait to publish until I had more of an audience.  In it, I provide five ways to get rich quick, from rum running to creating a doomsday device and holding the world hostage (I said get rich quick, not get rich easily).  It’s a pretty funny piece, and hopefully a nice parody of how many people think when they try to get rich quick.

3. Ten Steps to Control Your Finances Reviewed – Another series I’m quite proud of: I tried to break all the financial information you could you need into ten simple steps (well, eleven, since I later added a step 0 to remind everyone of the importance of donating to charity, even as you start to get  your own finances in order).  As with all such summaries, it’s a bit light on details, but the basic points (and how to achieve them) are still as relevant as ever (and considering  the downward turn my finances have taken since then, I could probably stand to re-learn some of the basics).

4. Things I Wish I Learned In High School - Long time readers probably know that one of my favorite pet subjects to discuss is the deficiency of the current American school system.  I realize, of course, that’s it is impossible to teach EVERYTHING in high school, but there are some pretty sizable gaps that in our modern society, really shouldn’t exist when you are considered ready for the ‘real world’.  Here are a few places I would suggest schools make a higher effort.

5. Marginal Tax Rates and You - One of my pet peeves when discussing taxes is the implication made by many that your marginal tax rate is the same as your average tax rate.  Thanks to our graduated tax system, this is not the case; regardless of what tax bracket you are in, you are paying a lower marginal tax rate.  For more commentary on what exactly this means, read on, and enjoy the marginal tax rate goodness.

6. The Tragedy of the Commons – As you might guess from the fact that I spend a goodly amount of my free time writing about money, investing, and personal finance, I’ve become a bit of a money geek.  I love being able to share economic principles and try to put them into simple to understand terms.  Of course, in some cases, the economic principles are already couched in the form of stories, like the Tragedy of the Commons.  Read, enjoy, and consider the ramifications.

There you have it, six of my favorite posts from my first year of blogging (actually, I didn’t even get beyond my first six months of blogging; apparently, I had a lot of good posts when I was first getting started).  Have a great week!  *Goes back to spending time with his family.*