It might be hard to accept (I know it was for me), but this post marks three years that I have been blogging here on the Amateur Financier.  Yes, three years ago this very day, February 6th, I wrote my first post in what would become The Amateur Financier.  Now, things were a bit different back then; I was only twenty-six, rather than the ripe old age of twenty-nine where I currently find myself.  I was only dating Sondra, rather than planning to marry her (which looks like it’s going to happen in March).  Perhaps most importantly for the founding of this blog, I was, at the time, unemployed and looking for a way to bring in more money (as well as express my increasing interest in investing and personal finance).

The blog itself has changed quite a bit, as well.  I spent the first month and a half on Blogger (where you can still see my initial few blog entries), before getting help moving to my current location and starting to use WordPress.  I had done much less reading about personal finance, and was much less informed than I have become in the years since.  (If you spend several hours each week, every week, for a few years, you pick up a few things.)  My opinion on various personal finance issues has grown and expanded as I’ve learned more and explored the concepts in more depth; one of the best examples is the Fair Tax, where I’ve gone from cautious supporter to opponent, albeit one who still thinks it would be an improvement on the current tax system.  (Although, it’s hard to think of a tax system that wouldn’t be an improvement on the current hodge-podge of laws, restrictions, loopholes, and thousands of pages of notes we call the US Tax Code.)

Throughout all of this, I’ve been pleased to have friends, readers, and fellow bloggers who have supported and encouraged me along the way.  Thanks to all of them, and all of you, I’ve kept going even when it seemed at times that I was sending my posts off to the abyss, never to be seen again.  So, I just wanted to take this opportunity to say: Thank you.  Thank you all very, very much for all the comments, questions, support, and, if I can use this term to refer to the feelings that online readers have for the writers of their reading material, love, that you all have shown me over these past three years.  I appreciate it more than I could ever properly express, and it makes me want to keep this blog going for not only another three years, but another three hundred.  Thanks for everything,

Sincerely,

Roger the Amateur Financier.

Here's to Another Great Three Years of Blogging!

I imagine that even my most die-hard fans might not realize it, but today is something other than the Superbowl.  (Go Steelers, by the way.)  Yes, two years ago on this very day, I wrote my very first post for the Amateur Financier.  It’s been a long and interesting journey, and I’m glad for every comment I’ve gotten, every reader who’s shared their thoughts, and every post that I’ve been able to write.

Speaking of posts, I thought the best way to celebrate my anniversary would be to look at some of my favorite posts from my first two years blogging and sharing my thoughts here.  With over five hundred to choose from, it was kind of hard to narrow things down, but

My Favorite Posts from the First Two Years of The Amateur Financier

12. 5 Ways to Get Rich Quick – An April Fool’s post on how to quickly and easily earn more money.  I like being able to have fun while blogging, and this was probably my funniest post for the first year of my blog (to me, at least).

11. Three Things My Mother Taught Me About Money – Almost all my positive traits in life I owe to my mother and her influence.   My success in life pretty much comes down to everything she’s done for me.  (Is it too early for Mother’s Day shopping?)

10. Things I Will NOT Do For Money – On the subject of what my mother taught me, I decided to do a list of things that no amount of money could get me to do (and others where it would require very special circumstances to convince me to do anything).  If you want to know the things you have no worry that I will do, feel free to read on.

9. The Amateur Financier One Page Financial Guide – All of my money wisdom, distilled down to a single page.  Besides being a very succinct, award-winning (no, literally; I won a contest using this one page guide) summary of my accumulated knowledge, it’s a pretty straightforward method of controlling your money, if I do say so myself.

8. Fifteen Things to Tell a Younger Me - One of my favorite posts, it’s a list of everything I intend to pass on to my past self if (when) time travel is ever perfected.  Besides appealing to the sci-fi nut in me, looking back on the ‘mistakes’ I’ve made helped give me an idea of where I can make improvements in my life.

7. 7 Things You Don’t Know About The Amateur Financier – I like being able to share personal information about myself, and here’s one of favorite posts on my personal life.  If you want to learn more about me and what I do when I’m not writing for The Amateur Financier (or studying), be sure to check it out.

6. Does Success Skew Your Perception? – One of my favorite of my more ‘psychological’ posts, I take a look at how success (or failure) in your activities can distort your perception on their difficulty or complexity.  Sometimes it seems that people take too much of a ‘if I can do it, anyone else can, too’ attitude.

5. What I’m Thankful to Have – I decided to celebrate my first Thanksgiving writing this blog by posting a list of the things I’m incredibly thankful to have in my life.  I enjoyed the concept so much, I did it again last year, and fully intend to make it a yearly tradition.

4. When Companies Get Really Creepy: ‘Dead Peasant’ Life Insurance – Possibly the article that’s inspired the longest, most thought provoking comments that I’ve gotten on my blog.  It’s always nice to get other perspectives, and I do enjoy reading and considering other ideas from my readers.

3. 10 Steps to Control Your Finances Reviewed – The finale of a week-long series creating an order for your financial goals.  If you want a way to prioritize your plans, this is a decent way to get started (in my admittedly biased opinion).

2. Unemployment and Motivation: A Case Study – By FAR my most popular post (being featured on MSN will do that, you know), I explain how receiving unemployment has affected the motivation of at least one person: me.  Next time you hear someone debating about how unemployment stops people from looking for work, feel free to point them my way so I can set them straight.

1. What Christmas Ornaments Taught Me About Money – A personal story, telling about how I managed to make a surprising amount of money at my elementary school’s Christmas ornament sale.  It’s one of the things that’s really stuck with me in the years since (as evidenced by the fact that I blogged about it more than a decade later), and one of my favorite stories from my past.

This is, of course, only a small sample of the many, many interesting posts you’ll find here on The Amateur Financier; with over five hundred, I could barely scratch the surface, even limiting the selection to my favorite posts.  Hopefully, though, you’ll see something you didn’t read, or haven’t properly digested already.  Thanks for encouraging me throughout the past two years, and here’s hoping we can celebrate again in two years from now (or beyond)!

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Wow, it’s hard to believe, but this is the 500th post I’ve put up here on The Amateur Financier.  When you combine this with the upcoming second anniversary of when I started to write for this blog early in February of 2009, to say nothing of the fact that I’ve managed to get my Alexa score back under 200,000 about a week ago, and January is turning out to be a pretty interesting month for me, blog wise.  (Given that I’ve needed to take my car into be repaired twice so far, ‘interesting’ is an understatement, but this is going to be a happy post.  Tomorrow I’ll cover the details of my latest brush with automotive troubles.)

To celebrate my 500th post, I thought I would share some of the things that writing 500 posts of personal finance information has taught me.  (Well, nearly 500 posts; there are the occasional guest posts in there, so I’ve only written about 490 posts personally.)  Now, I suppose I could share my top 500 financial tips, but that seems a bit excessive.  So, instead, let’s go with the top 5 personal tips I’ve learned from reading and blogging about personal finance for more than two years:

The Top 5 Personal Finance Tips

5) Invest Early, and Invest Often: One of the best ways to improve your net worth is to invest.  There’s so many different ways to invest that I could fill this blog with possibilities (and did a pretty good job of it already; over forty percent of my posts discuss investing to some extent, including but not limited to my Investing 101 series), but the most important is to invest, not necessarily what you invest in.  Keep it simple, find something that meets your needs and is easy enough to understand, and keep investing throughout your life.

4) Develop Alternative Sources of Income: One of the major reasons I started this blog in the first place is try to develop a source of income outside of a typical nine-to-five job.  Given that most of the time I’ve been blogging, I’ve either been unemployed or worked unusual hours (no nine-to-five for me), it seemed, and still seems, like a good idea to diversify my sources of income , as well as boosting my income.  I recommend that my readers look into other ways into building their income as well.  (Although, from my own experience, I’d suggest blogging only if you are willing to put in a lot of work and risk the possibility of not making much income.)

3) Be Prepared for Emergencies: If nothing else, the numerous problems I’ve had with my car this month drove home the need to be prepared for the unexpected events in life.  There are many ways to prepare for emergencies, since there are many different types of emergencies you could face, from simple car problems to serious health problems.  The best thing to do is to try to foresee and prepare for any possible emergency, however unlikely it might seem while you are preparing.

2) Keep Debt to a Minimum: There is quite a lot of disagreement in the personal finance community about what constitutes ‘good debt’ and what qualifies as ‘bad debt’ (to say nothing of the debate over whether any debt can be considered good, regardless of its purpose or the interest rates associated with the debt).  As a result, if you do much personal finance reading, you get a range of advice on how much (and what types of) debt you should take on, from absolutely none to as much as possible (assuming it’s used for leverage purposes).  My simple view on how to handle debt: keep it to a minimum, and pay it off as soon as possible (starting with the highest interest debt).  If you can do that, you should have few debt problems throughout your life.

And the top, single most important thing I’ve learned from my blogging:

1) Give back to charity: There are many reasons to have money, and many things to do with the money you have, but few are more rewarding and spiritually fulfilling than using the money you have available to help those who are less fortunate.  I’ve tried my best to spread the wealth, although I’m sure I can do more.  Monthly contributions of $25 to the Yakezie scholarship fund is a start, but I’m sure I can do more (and probably should).

Which is why, in celebration of my 500th post, I’ve decided to donate $500 to charity as a way to help tilt my personal scales back towards giving (and who knows, maybe improve my karma a bit as well).  I’m not quite sure what charity to send it to next, but with how many deserving ones there are out there, I’m sure that I will find plenty of good groups who are deserving of some donations.  (And to keep my generosity going, I’ll set up a few automated transfers to keep up the donations throughout the year.)

There you have it, five suggestion to celebrate my 500th post.  With any luck, I’ll find myself celebrating the next five hundred posts before too long (and having even more readers around to encourage me to write five thousand more).  Thanks to you all for reading, commenting, and encouraging me, my friends!

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Today, October 27th, is my birthday.  Once again, another year managed to come and go without me being able to stop it.  Oh, well, I suppose that this is the natural order of things for us mortals.  I had a nice visit with my family a few weeks ago, and I’m planning to visit my fiancee this coming weekend.  I suppose I don’t really have right to complain; things are going pretty well for me at the moment.

It did occur to me as I reflected on everything that’s changed int the past year, that there’s quite a lot I still haven’t learned that I wish I had.  I suppose this happens to everyone as they age; part regret for missed opportunities in the past, part hope for the future, looking at where I want to expand my knowledge helps me to figure out where I should put my mental energy to work.  On that note, here are some things I’d like to learn before I turn the big 2-9 this time next year:

1) Speed Reading: Given the ever increasing size of my ‘To-Be-Read’ pile (both the physical pile of books and magazines I own, and the virtual list of websites and blogs I follow), the ability to cut down my reading time is one of the things that could make the most difference in my daily life.  I actually requested a book on speed reading as one of my presents, and hopefully my reading speed will increase as a result.  It’s not a cure-all, of course; no matter how fast I read, if I keep adding things to the list, I’ll never dig myself out of the hole I’m in.  (Although, I always wondered how someone digs themselves ‘out’ of a hole…but that’s neither here nor there.)  Which brings me to my next learning goal…

2) How to NOT Procrastinate: I’ll be the first to admit, I have a horrible habit of procrastinating.  There are any number of things I do to avoid doing the the things I should be doing, from cruising the internet randomly to re-watching TV shows to simply daydreaming.  I’ll even procrastinate while I’m doing something to avoid doing real work, like continuously checking email when I mean to be blogging when I should be studying for an upcoming test.  (Yes, much as I love to write here, even my blog can be a form of procrastination when there’s something more urgent or important to do.)  This one is going to be tricky, but I’m trying to set goals for myself and stick with them as well as I can.

3) Learn to Speak a Foreign Language: Alright, this one might not be possible in just one year (at least, a year when I have graduate level classes and research on top of my blogging goals to achieve), but getting a start on learning a foreign language, at least, would help make me feel that the year has not gone to waste.  I’m leaning toward Japanese, myself; I realize it’s not supposed to be an easy language for native English speakers to learn (at least, compared to European languages such as Spanish, German, or French), but it has a certain air of exoticism to it.  (As I’ve mentioned several times before, Sondra and I are both big fans of Japanese culture, and we would like to visit Japan at some point.  Plus, knowing Japanese could come in handy as we watch our anime.)  Hopefully, with some time and effort put into learning the language, I can become conversant, if not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.

This is far from a complete list of things I hope to learn before this time next year (a list that includes advanced biochemistry and most of my other school subjects, as well as personal finance and self-improvement topics), but it’s a decent start, and a pretty good reminder of some of my long term goals.  Hopefully, if I can keep myself motivated and focused (and not procrastinate too much), I’ll be able to write about completing all of these tasks, at least to some extent, when my next birthday rolls around.  Have a great day, everyone!

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This weekend, I passed a major milestone, one I’ve been working towards to the best of my ability since nearly the beginning of the year.  (Technically, it’s one I’ve been working towards since I started this humble blog, but one that I became aware of and started to actively work towards only earlier this year.)  If you’ve been reading The Amateur Financier for any sizable length of time, you’ve probably heard me mention the Samurai Alexa Challenge, the attempt by Financial Samurai to boost himself and a group of other interested bloggers into a personal finance force, by focusing on increasing their Alexa rankings.  (You can read more about the challenge, the rankings, and how to improve your own Alexa standings from this guest post by The Investor.)

I joined, back when my ranking was in the mid 500,000s, setting my sights on the lowest hurdle in the challenge: boosting my rank to 200,000.  As of this weekend (Sunday, in particular), I’ve made it to my goal.  Yes, my rank is now higher than 200,000!  In the course of just over two months, I’ve managed to go from 568,000 to 199,000, increasing my blog rating by 369,000 ranks or so.  I’ll admit, I feel very proud of myself and my blog for coming so far.

Celebratory Fireworks!

But as the title of this post says, the best is yet to come.  Now that I’m in the top 200,000 sites on the web, the next step is clear: setting my sights even higher, looking at that next rung, and trying to climb high.  I know that the higher my Alexa ranking becomes, the more difficult it will be to boost it even higher; as with any competitive event (and creating quality websites has definitely become competitive over the years), the higher you climb in the rankings, the fiercer the competition.  (Financial Samurai himself is a perfect illustration of this; in the period my blog moved up 369,000 rankings, his blog moved up 35,000 rankings, from 74,000 at the start of the challenge to 39,000 today.)

I have no doubt that I’ll succeed, though; this challenge and the sense of accomplishment it has given me has left me feeling confident and motivated, more so than almost any experience I’ve had since I’ve begun blogging.  (Although, having my blog entry quoted on MSN is definitely a strong contender.)  I’m still a ways away from conquering the blogging world or giving up my job search and settling down as a full-time, professional blogger (although, that latter suggestion sounds more and more tempting every day), but with more effort and time, I’m sure I’ll only get closer each and every day.

But I won’t do it alone.  If nothing else, this Alexa challenge has shown me that it’s only as a group that we who send out our thoughts into the ether of cyberspace can succeed.  So, allow me to end this celebratory post with a few thank-yous to those of you who have helped make this moment possible.  (I’ll do my best to keep from getting too sappy on you all, but I make no promises.)

First, thanks to you, Financial Samurai.  This Alexa challenge is one of the most unique events I’ve ever encountered, and it’s brought together a diverse group of bloggers in a spirit of cooperation and mutual help that’s rare to see anywhere nowadays, let alone in the wilds of the Internet.  Keep up the good work, my friend, and keep setting the bar high so the rest of us have something for which we can aim.

Thanks also to all of my fellow Yakezie members.  I know that many of you have already zoomed past the 200,000 ranking (including those of you who were much higher at the start of this challenge), and to you I say, good job; but watch your backs, because I’m coming up fast!  To those of you who are still striving towards 200,000, remember this: anything is possible, as long as you keep working diligently and doing your best.  I’ve visited many of your blogs, and I’m always impressed at the level of writing and quality of the sites I see.  Keep up the excellent work, and soon I’ll be the one who has to watch his back!

A most gracious thanks to everyone who has featured, tweeted, written about, or otherwise promoted my blog.  It’s thanks in no small part to all of you and your help in getting the word out that I’ve managed to reach this point.  Personal finance writing is, as I discovered well after creating my blog, one of the most competitive areas of writing on the web, and it’s only because I’ve had friends willing to give me a boost that I’ve grown above being an obscure writer working on a blog nobody’s ever read into the powerhouse I currently am becoming.  Thanks for the boost, and here’s hoping I can continue to boost others in turn.

Finally, to all my readers, the biggest thanks of all.  I realize that many of you fall into the previously listed categories, but just in case you haven’t, allow me to say that it’s because of the encouragement I get from knowing that my posts are read and appreciated that I can keep writing everyday and trying to help others to understand and appreciate money.  Let me just say one last little thing:

Truly, the best is yet to come.

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Well, it’s the end of the year, a time when we look at ourselves, at our accomplishments and our failures, and make plans to improve in the new year.  With that in mind, it’s time to look over my life in 2009, see what I did right, what I did wrong, and what I intend to do in the future.

Luckily, I’ve been blogging for most of this year, so my year-end review process is going to be much easier than it has in the past.  I’ve been pretty open about my personal and financial life when writing this blog, so it should be a much easier process to go through and spot my high and low points.  Come along and enjoy the fun!

The Good:

I started a new personal finance blog!  In hindsight, maybe personal finance wasn’t the best niche to focus on, but it has kept my interest and spurred on my writing for this past year, and hopefully quite a while into the future.

Celebrate the Good Times!

I was able to spend another Valentine’s Day with my beloved.  (I promise this won’t turn into a list of the celebrations I had with Sondra, although a few more might sneak through…)

Speaking of which, this was also the year that we got engaged!  *Does his happy Roger dance to celebrate, again*

After only a few months, I decided to go at making this blog interesting and productive, and decided to leave Blogger for my own site (which you’re reading now).  It’s been a great move, in my opinion.

I shared seven things with my readers that they probably didn’t know (unless they’ve been stalking me…)

As part of my attempts to ingratiate myself more fully with the PF blogging community, I hosted a carnival, the first of several, actually.

I got a new job, with good pay, at a place I’ve been trying to get into for quite a while…

The Bad:

…Which I unfortunately lost before too long.

I had to make semi-major repairs on my car, at a time when I was unemployed and trying to stretch my savings as much as possible.  On the bright side, I did get another post out of the deal, so there was some good that came from the whole ordeal.

And deal the bad times

While I had a wonderful trip out to visit my fiancee’s extended family, our trip home was horrible.  I hope I never have to deal with that kind of aggravation again.

The Ugly:

I tried not to spend too much time on the whole real estate melt down and the after effects, but it was hard to be a blogger in 2009 without expressing some opinion on the whole situation.  So here is my rant on the causes of our financial mess (which is far from completely cleaned up).

I’ve run into some complications getting my unemployment benefits paid, after the aforementioned job loss.  (As of this writing, it seems to be resolved, but I’m not counting my chickens before they are hatched after all the trouble that I’ve had.)

My Year in Review

I’ll be honest, I’m a bit surprised at how many good things happened this yes, and how few bad ones.  It’s easy to get lost in the bad things and forget all the positives.  But all in all, 2009 was a pretty good year.  Yes, I wish that I hadn’t had so many job problems (and all the associated money problems that went with them), but it was also a year filled with positives.  I got engaged!  I started a blog!  I held several jobs over the course of the year, and I’m sure I can get another job soon.

All in all, 2009 was pretty good.  I can only hope that 2010 will be even better.  But I suppose my year will be only as good as I can make it… Happy New Year, Everyone!

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It’s finally happened: I’ve reached 250 posts of The Amateur Financier!  I’ve managed to keep blogging through nine months, two jobs, and any number of other distractions.  It hasn’t always been an easy task, continuing to put up new articles on a (mostly) timely basis, but it’s been surprisingly fun and entertaining, to say nothing of introducing me to a variety of good blogs.

Now, if you’ll indulge me for a bit, before I highlight some of the interesting posts from other blogs in this past week, I’d like to do a retrospective of sorts and look at a few of my favorite posts from the first stage of the Amateur Financier.  Some were popular, some were highly informative, and some simply stuck in my mind as being fun to write, but all of them represent some of my favorite works of the Amateur Financier.  In no particular order, here are some of my top picks:

My Favorite Posts (So Far)

Three Things I Wish I knew When I Was Younger – One of the advantages that comes with age is wisdom, while one of the disadvantages is regret.  Here’s a list of a few things that, in hindsight, I wish I could have learned earlier in my life, but still appreciate gaining the knowledge now.

Let's party like... we aren't being forced to wear silly hats!

One Million Dollars – A few priorities I would have for how to spend one million dollars, if I happened to stumble across it.  Looking back, I can already see (less than one year later), that I would do things quite a bit differently (in particular, providing more money to my mother) than what I have listed here.  I suppose that’s the nature of goals; they are always moving and changing.

Unemployment 102: Know Your Fees! – A reminder to those who are unemployed (as I was at the time of this article): you have to be careful about fees that might be attached to your unemployment benefits, particularly if you are getting your benefits through a debit card.  The last thing you want to do is to be nickeled and dimed by small fees every time you attempt to get at your money.

5 Ways to Get Rich Quick – A list of simple, highly effective, and easy to put into effect plans to generate millions, even tens of millions of dollars with practically no time or effort… published on the first of April.

Ten Steps to Control Your Finances Reviewed – I spent an entire week in May going step by step to show everyone how to get their finances in order.  Here’s a summary of all my tips, in order; all are good to follow, although given some of the comments, I do sometimes consider whether I made the right choice in their order…

Trick Tips – More of a ‘fun’ post than anything else, this is simply a collection of ways to calculate a tip when you don’t have a calculator handy or printed tips suggestions on the bottom of the receipt.  If you find yourself in such a situation, or simply like trying to keep your mind sharp with some regular algebra, these tips could prove helpful.

Blog Posts I Liked This Past Week

You’re Rejected!  How I Use Rejection to Motivate Me Every Single Day – Many of us (and I’ll gladly include myself in that number) go out of our way to avoid being rejected by the people around us, be they friends, coworkers, or even random strangers in a public setting.  But as the Financial Samurai reminds us, rejection is one of the best ways to learn and grow.  Keep that in mind, and perhaps you’ll start looking at rejection in a new light.

How to Pay Off More Than One Debt – If you’re in a situation where you have more than one debt to pay off, it can be tricky to know where to start.  Luckily, Stephanie of Poorer Than You has created a helpful little Google document that will allow you to organize all your debts and sort them according to the lowest balances, highest interest rates, or even Stephanie’s own favorite, the ‘annoyance factor’ you feel about repaying the debt.  Good if you want to find some place to start with your debt repayment.

Top Fifteen College Degrees by Starting Salary – My Life ROI covers the top degrees for those of us who want to profit from our education.  I’m a bit miffed that my major (biochemistry) doesn’t make the list, while the degree I would have gotten if I stuck with my original major (pharmacy) tops it, with a six figure salary to boot.  Ah, well, such is life, and perhaps in a non-round-up post, I’ll have to share more of that little story…

Retiring on Investment Interest and Dividends Alone – An interesting idea I’ve heard tossed about in various places, to live off the dividends and interest your investments can produce rather than drawing down the principle.  In theory, doing so would enable you to stretch your retirement dollars much further, as your principle would remain the same through the course of your retirement (or preferably, increase as you reinvest some of your dividends so that your income keeps ahead of inflation).  However, as Generation Y Investor points out, doing so requires a rather hefty amount of money up front, even in favorable climates for dividends.  Still, it’s one idea I’m definitely going to look at for the future.

Make Money With a Garage Sale – I’ll admit it: I’m a pack rat.  It runs in the family, our tendency to accumulate more and more stuff without really having any place to go with it.  Luckily, there are ways to get rid of it, including a garage sale.  If you go that route, be sure to (a) check out Studenomics’ article on making money with a garage sale to pick up some good tips, and (b) invite me, so I find some deals!  (What?  I’ve already told you it’s genetic…)

That’s it for this week at the Amateur Financier; here’s to another 250 posts, and many hundreds more after that!

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Well, well, well, it’s that time of year again.  Yes, I am another year older, and presumably, another year wiser.  Certainly, I’ve been learning a lot about personal finance, investing, and money management over this past year.  One advantage of writing a blog is that you tend to do lots of research into your subject matter, and as a result, I’ve had the opportunity to read more about personal finance in the past year than I did in my previous twenty-six (which makes me 27 now, in case you were wondering).

Of course, aging does have problems of its own.  One of my biggest problems with birthdays as I’ve been getting older is that I no longer know what presents I should request.  There isn’t too much I want, and frankly, what I do want, I can easily afford on my own.  I didn’t have any good suggestions for possible presents from my family, although it would be nice to go out to dinner.  (It’s official; I’m the father in an old sitcom, a fate I always figured would happen eventually.)  Admittedly, this isn’t exactly a horrifyingly devastating problem, but that’s all I’ve really been worrying about this birthday.

So, in lieu of expensive presents or doodads I’ll play with for a little bit and then forget, all I really want for my birthday is to learn a bit more about my fellow bloggers.  Please feel free to leave a comment listing your birthday, so I can add it to this post and have a reminder for when it rolls around next year.  Hopefully, all your birthdays in the upcoming year will be as happy as mine (and less busy; I had to work last night and I’m working again tonight, even coming in early for a monthly meeting).  Have a great October 27th, everyone!

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Alright, just a quick little post: I received a call earlier today, indicating that I got the job I interviewed for on Thursday.  It’s a temp to perm position at Sanofi Pasteur, a gigantic pharmaceutical company that focuses on vaccines (in fact, if you got a flu shot, there was a 50% chance that it was produced at Sanofi, in the very division I am going to be employed).  I have been trying to get a job with them pretty much since I graduated, so I am immensely thrilled by this opportunity.

The only downside is that where I am working is quite a distance away from my fiancee (like a four to five hour drive away).  This obviously rules out any commuting from her home, which I’ve recently moved into, although my mother’s house is close enough that I can commute, at least until I make other living or commuting arrangements.  I’m a little sad that I can’t be with my sweet Sondra and accept this job, but I have do what needs to be done, I suppose.

Anyway, I just wanted to make a quick note to all my readers about this good news.  I hope everyone has a good weekend, and stay well!

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Hello and welcome!  This post is going to be rather special.  First of all, it’s actually my one-hundredth post!  Slowly, steadily, and surely, I’ve been building up my little blog.  It’s been a fun trip so far, and I thank you all for reading and following along with my blog.

Next, I’m currently in between jobs; my position as an organic chemistry tutor ended yesterday (in fact, if you’re reading this between 1 and 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on May 2nd, the students will be in the midst of taking their final).  I’ve got an arrangement to run the organic chemistry lab during the summer, but that does not start until June 8th, so I’ve got more than a month of time off.  Which actually works out pretty well for me, because…

I am going to visit my fiancée’s extended family over the next few weeks.  I’ll be leaving on Thursday, and not returning until two weeks from now.  This means, no Weekly Updates for a few weeks (although, I’m doing everything I can to make sure the other posts continue on schedule).  It should be enjoyable , although meeting my future wife’s family will likely prove to trying, as well.

It’s going to be a busy (but fun and enjoyable) few weeks.  Now, let’s get down to business, and take a look at my finances before I have to start packing:

A good week on Wall Street and minimal new spending (since I’ve already paid for many of the trip expenses), means that I saw a sizable increase in my net worth this week.  My finances probably won’t be quite so rosy next time I can update my net worth, but for now, I’m doing pretty well.

Thanks again, everyone, for reading and following my blog!

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I have some big news.  I am engaged to my sweet, wonderful girlfriend Sondra.  I bought her an adorable engagement ring, which she helped me to pick out.  It was fairly inexpensive, as engagements rings go (none of that ‘three months’ salary’ stuff for us), but she seems to love it.

It’s going to be a fairly long engagement; her grandmother is paying for her education, but only so long as she doesn’t get married before she graduates.  Since she has three more semesters of school to go, this means the earliest that we can get married without incurring a large amount of debt to finish her schooling is to wait until 2011.  Plus, the time we take before we tie the knot can be used to build up a house down payment or create an emergency fund.  (To say nothing of giving me time to find a job…)

I am very happy about these events, if a little nervous about my future.  But, I have faith that everything will work out for the best in the end.  Now, to review my financial state, with all this personal business out of the way.

A pretty messy week for my finances, with my credit card bills coming due, my Sharebuilder investments activating, and my unemployment check arriving.  Still, my net worth is steadily increasing, which is always a good sign.

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(Welcome to my fiftieth published post! It’s been a fairly short, but still wild ride. Hopefully, I can keep posting, entertaining and informing you. In honor of this celebration, I’ve tried to find some good news to blog about, not an easy task in the current economic climate. I think I’ve succeeded, at least for those of us in Generation Y.)

If you’re young and still working, you should be upbeat, if not cheering, about the current economic down turn. (Just don’t do it too near anyone over the age of fifty or so, or they might come after you with torches and pitchforks.)

Just in case you feel I’m alone in thinking this, note that Liz Weston of MSN Money has noted that those of us who are under 35 should be saying hurray to the meltdown. Now, there are some of us under 35 who have gotten caught in the crossfire of the economic meltdown and are currently un(der)employed. But even for us, there are advantages to this crisis; it’s been lowering the prices of stocks, for one.

Why is this a good thing? Well, if you’re young enough to have multiple decades of work ahead of you (a fun thought, I know, but stay with me), being able to buy stocks on the cheap with your earnings will be advantageous later, when the stock market recovers. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at a real example.

Let’s say you wanted to invest in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VFINX), the first index fund, and one of the most popular, to boot. If you had invested $3,000 in VFINX on March 19, 2008 to open the 500 Index, you would have paid $120.06 per share and bought 24.988 shares. If you invested that same amount yesterday, March 19, 2009, then your $3,000 would have purchased 41.305 shares at $72.63. A one year difference, but the same amount of money now buys about 60% more shares of the Index Fund.

Think of it as a buy one, get one half off sale; right now, you can buy more shares of the exact same funds that were available a year or two ago at much higher prices. Add in decades of time for the market to recover, and you have a perfect set up for building up financial assets at fire sale prices for years to come.

This isn’t an attempt to encourage market timing; I don’t know when the economy will recover. We might have months or even years of more financial pain before things get better, or we might already be starting to recover. We’ll only know further on down the road, when looking back at the current time frame. It’s much better to keep investing, and simply take advantage of the current decline in the market.

In any case, the long-term results for stock investments all but ensure that time and willingness to take some risk will pay off eventually. If you’re a member of Generation Y, you are experiencing one of the best set of circumstances you and I will likely see grow our money over time, taking advantage of lower prices now to benefit as the economy recovers and stock prices begin to rise again. So, yes, if you’re young and investing regularly, now’s a time to celebrate!

Just… not in front of your parents.

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Wow, I’m up to the tenth post for my blog already. Ten posts in eight days; if I keep this pace up, I’ll be over 400 posts by the end of the year. I’m starting to get into a pattern, as well; as long as I continue to focus and regularly update the blog, I can definitely keep right on rolling with this.

Onto my financial updates:

Savings

PNC (Checking Account) $ 54 +$20
Susquehanna (CD) $ 2542 +$0
ING Direct (Checking) $ 287 -$1352
ING Direct (Savings) $ 1000 +$0
ING Direct (Orange CD) $ 1012 +$0
HSBC Direct (Savings) $ 222 +$0
Smarty Pig (Savings) $ 2191 +$0
Vanguard (Money Market) $ 1000 -$100

Total Savings $ 8308 -$1432

Investments

Vanguard (Roth IRA) $ 6158 -$229
- Small Cap Index (NAESX) $ 3558 -$183
- High Dividend Yield (VHDYX) $ 2600 -$46

Share builder (ETFs) $ 2609 +$74
- Total US Market (TMW) $ 789 +$25
- Extended Market (VXF) $ 801 +$12
- Total Foreign (VEU) $ 500 +$18
- Small Cap Value (VBR) $ 247 +$9
- Emerging Markets (VWO) $ 272 +$10

Total Investments $ 8767 -$155

Total Assets $ 17,075 -$1587

Credit Cards

MasterCard (JCPenney) $ 0 +$0
American Express ($ 233) +$908

Student Loans ($ 11,929) +$0

Total Debts ($ 12,162) +$908

Net Worth $ 4913 -$679

A loss of net worth, overall. The withdraw from my ING checking to pay off my American Express was a wash, as far as net worth, but the automatic investment into Sharebuilder was enough to more than make up for the bad investment week. Although, since I transferred in $200 and only showed a gain of $74, it was still pretty bad.

But, the unemployment check will arrive next week, and I should be getting my first check from my part-time job, all of which should put me in the black next week (even if we have another lackluster week for investments).

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Hello! Welcome to my blog, The Amateur Financier. I’m starting this blog as a way to help work my way through the rut in which I currently find myself. So, for my first post, indulge me while I explain my current situation, and list a few things I’d like to improve.

My name is Roger. I’m twenty-six years old, a white male, and tend to be rather shy and geeky. (One reason why I’m starting a blog on Friday night, rather than going out and partying.) I do get out into the world, although even then, my pursuits are fairly dorky: for example, tomorrow I’m going to an anime meeting.

The rest of my social life is pretty lack luster. I do have a girlfriend, a sweet girl named Sondra whom I love very much. Unfortunately, we are in a semi-long distance relationship, living on opposite sides of the state (Pennsylvania, in case you’re wondering). While I talk to her on the phone every day and do get to go out to see her about once a month, after nearly one and a half years dating, it is getting harder and harder to avoid being frustrated by how far apart we live.

I studied as a biochemist, a field I greatly enjoy. I graduated near the top of my class (actually, since there was only one biochemist in my year, I WAS my class).  Although it took me a while to get traction in my job hunt, I was finally able to land a position in my field. I was working as a Quality Control technician at a company that produced inhalable anesthetics (they’re related to chloroform, in both effect and chemical composition). I was making decent money, and even though I ended up on the night shift, it was still an enjoyable experience overall.

Unfortunately, with the economic downturn, the job at which I had been working let me go (or, fill in your favorite downsizing euphemism) last November. I’m currently working as a tutor at my old university (at a much lower rate of pay), and have been trying my best to find something more permanent.

There you have it; I’m a geeky, underemployed, Romeo who’s a six-hour drive from his Juliet. But I’m not looking for pity (although, I wouldn’t be upset with a *little* pity). Instead, I’m making this blog to help motivate me to improve my life. My resolutions are:

1) Finding a good job nearer to my girl. While I have the opportunity to do so, I figure I can kill two birds with one stone; if I can find a full time job nearer to Sondra, I’d be in much better shape.

2) Improve my finances. I’ve started to get into studying personal finance, and I’m enjoying the challenge of learning how to manage my money.

3) Develop alternate income streams. As I’ve come to learn, life can interrupt your financial plans. As a result, I’m going to do everything possible to have money coming in from multiple directions, including, of course, this blog.

As you can see, my main focus is going to be on improving my financial situation. Just call me Roger, The Amateur Financier. Welcome to my blog!

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