I finally decided to move to an independent hosting platform. The new blog is called Living Off Dividends.
I've been working on it for the past several days, which is why I haven't been posting. I'm still working out some of the formatting issues, but all of the old posts have been ported over. Please check it out and let me know if they're are any obvious bugs.
Next I'll be adding in the advertiser's links, who will be enjoying links on both sites for the time being. After that, I'll add the blog roll. Bloggers, please update your links to reflect the change.
Gouging At The Pump?
Isn't it funny how the ruckus about high gasoline prices has disappeared? I no longer hear anything about it on the news, the politicians haven't taxed Exxon-Mobile's record profits, and I don't get idiotic emails asking me to boycott gas stations for one day in a year.
Yesterday I was filling gas and I decided to actually calculate how much tax I pay on each gallon. Regular was $2.99 of which about 7.75% is sales tax, but there were a few other taxes added. All told, $0.92 was taxes, which works out to about 30% taxes on each gallon.
Sounds like the government is already getting the lion's share of profits and they didn't want anyone else to get in on the action!
Since I hate paying any form of taxes, I think I'm finally motivated to reduce my driving to cut down on my gas usage!
Yesterday I was filling gas and I decided to actually calculate how much tax I pay on each gallon. Regular was $2.99 of which about 7.75% is sales tax, but there were a few other taxes added. All told, $0.92 was taxes, which works out to about 30% taxes on each gallon.
Sounds like the government is already getting the lion's share of profits and they didn't want anyone else to get in on the action!
Since I hate paying any form of taxes, I think I'm finally motivated to reduce my driving to cut down on my gas usage!
Housing Continues To Get Worse
Housing continues to get worse. According to a recent article in BusinessWeek:
This is another example of the fact that real estate agents don't often know much about real estate cycles or investing. Never ask an agent if its a good time to buy. They don't know and its not really their job. Their job is to help you select your perfect home based on your criteria and budget and their knowledge of the local neighborhoods. More importantly, they take care of the paperwork that most homebuyers find imtimidating and incomprehensible. Their job profile does not usually include providing investment advice, even if they claim they're investment experts.
A strong job market, the thriving casino and convention industry, and the highest population growth in the country made Vegas a boomtown for builders. Sin City represented one of the top five markets.
Today, new homes are empty and communities half-built. The number of unsold homes has reached as much as 48,000, by some estimates, up from a more or less steady level of 10,000 over the last several years. "Builders have a glut of houses that's going to weigh on home prices for awhile." says Dennis L. Smith, president of Home Builders Research Inc., a local consultancy.
Mike Alley has gotten whacked hard by the area's declining housing market. In the spring of 2005, Alley, an independent real estate agent in Racine, Wis., moved to Las Vegas, lured by the warm weather and the strong real estate market. He quickly found a sales job with Pulte, where he says agents were pulling in $500,000 a year for basically taking orders. "It was nutty," says Alley. "Houses were flying off the lot."
A year later, he decided to jump into the market himself and buy a home. He spent a month searching, settling on KB's Huntington subdivision. The neighborhood attracted a mix of folks, from couples just starting out to empty nesters. More important, there were a lot of families with young kids the same age as his. The $86,000 worth of upgrades, including higher-end cabinets and granite countertops, thrown in by KB Homes at a discount clinched it. Alley thought he was getting a deal: In August, 2006, he paid $360,000 for a three-bedroom home in Quayside Court, which was appraised for $415,000.
Yet even Alley, who made his living in this industry, says he was blindsided by the markdowns. Today he reckons his home is worth around $300,000. "I didn't quite keep my finger on the pulse of what [KB is] doing in this community," says Alley, who's largely gotten out of the real estate business. "I'm looking at the sales data, and they were selling my model for $50,000 less even months after I bought it."
This is another example of the fact that real estate agents don't often know much about real estate cycles or investing. Never ask an agent if its a good time to buy. They don't know and its not really their job. Their job is to help you select your perfect home based on your criteria and budget and their knowledge of the local neighborhoods. More importantly, they take care of the paperwork that most homebuyers find imtimidating and incomprehensible. Their job profile does not usually include providing investment advice, even if they claim they're investment experts.
Australian Dollar To Hit Parity With US Dollar.
I sold my long position in CurrencyShares Australian Dollar Trust (FXA) today. I made a nice 6% in about two weeks on it. I sold it because it gapped down and looked like it was going to drop futher in the next week or two.
The US Dollar is due for a short-term bounce which will cause the price of FXA to drop, but thinking long-term, I think the Australian Dollar will hit parity with the USD within 18 months. It isn't a far fetched idea when you consider that 1 AUD = 1.20 USD in 1981.
Others agree with me. According to Chris Gaffney of Everbank.com:
"Fundamentals suggest the Aussie dollar will continue to rise in 2008. The economy is expected to expand by more than 4% next year, and inflation will accelerate. Overseas shipments of raw materials, which contribute about 14% to Australia's economy, helped drive 4.3% growth in the second quarter from a year earlier, the biggest increase in three years."
A technical analyst at Goldman Sachs suggested "a close above the resistance level 89.25 would set the Australian dollar free to reach parity".
The Aussie buck traded at 88 cents this morning. Parity is only 13% away.
But in the short term I'm looking for a bit of a pull back.
The US Dollar is due for a short-term bounce which will cause the price of FXA to drop, but thinking long-term, I think the Australian Dollar will hit parity with the USD within 18 months. It isn't a far fetched idea when you consider that 1 AUD = 1.20 USD in 1981.
Others agree with me. According to Chris Gaffney of Everbank.com:
"Fundamentals suggest the Aussie dollar will continue to rise in 2008. The economy is expected to expand by more than 4% next year, and inflation will accelerate. Overseas shipments of raw materials, which contribute about 14% to Australia's economy, helped drive 4.3% growth in the second quarter from a year earlier, the biggest increase in three years."
A technical analyst at Goldman Sachs suggested "a close above the resistance level 89.25 would set the Australian dollar free to reach parity".
The Aussie buck traded at 88 cents this morning. Parity is only 13% away.
But in the short term I'm looking for a bit of a pull back.
How Does Your 401k Compare?
I have a 401k from a previous employer. With only a dozen mutual funds to choose from, it doesn't have very many investment choices. I've done the best I can from these choices and have selected 8 of them, with 75% of my 401k invested in just 3 funds. And I've managed to eke out a very respectable 17.4% for the first 3 quarters of the year.
On the flip side, my 401k with my current employer has about 3 dozen options. However, there's less diversification amongst them than with the previous employer! It lacks a REIT fund (not that I'd invest in it, since I'm heavily invested in Real estate on my own), a health care fund, and a technology fund.
Instead, some moron set it up with 4 bond funds, 2 small-cap broad market funds, 2 small-mid cap value funds, 2 small-mid cap blend funds, 4 mid-large cap equity funds, 4 mid-large cap value funds, 3 international funds, and so on.
So despite the wide selection of funds, they're less diverse than the 401k with only 12 options. Instead of choosing the fund with the least management fees, the lazy (or maybe inept?) administrator just included 3 or 4 similar funds so the participant can make his own decisions.
And despite having so many options, I only managed to make 14.05% in the current 401k for the same time period, which is basically a reflection of the broad market indices minus the management fees.
Sometimes fewer, more well-thought out options are better!
On the flip side, my 401k with my current employer has about 3 dozen options. However, there's less diversification amongst them than with the previous employer! It lacks a REIT fund (not that I'd invest in it, since I'm heavily invested in Real estate on my own), a health care fund, and a technology fund.
Instead, some moron set it up with 4 bond funds, 2 small-cap broad market funds, 2 small-mid cap value funds, 2 small-mid cap blend funds, 4 mid-large cap equity funds, 4 mid-large cap value funds, 3 international funds, and so on.
So despite the wide selection of funds, they're less diverse than the 401k with only 12 options. Instead of choosing the fund with the least management fees, the lazy (or maybe inept?) administrator just included 3 or 4 similar funds so the participant can make his own decisions.
And despite having so many options, I only managed to make 14.05% in the current 401k for the same time period, which is basically a reflection of the broad market indices minus the management fees.
Sometimes fewer, more well-thought out options are better!
Pictures of An Investment Property
After spending the past 12 months lightening my holdings, I currently have 5 investment properties left. 3 of them are in Salt Lake City and 2 are in Indianapolis.
Of the ones in SLC, two are located in Saratoga Springs with spectacular (spectacular to Californians who are used to "desert views" and dried-out shrubs) views Lake Utah. Here's what one of them looks like.
And here's the kitchen.
Its about 10 times nicer than my place in San Diego; at 1800 sq ft, its twice the size and and (with a 20% drop in San Diego prices and a 30% rise in SLC) only about 10% more expensive. But unlike my condo in SD, it sits on a quarter acre of land.
Of the ones in SLC, two are located in Saratoga Springs with spectacular (spectacular to Californians who are used to "desert views" and dried-out shrubs) views Lake Utah. Here's what one of them looks like.
And here's the kitchen.
Its about 10 times nicer than my place in San Diego; at 1800 sq ft, its twice the size and and (with a 20% drop in San Diego prices and a 30% rise in SLC) only about 10% more expensive. But unlike my condo in SD, it sits on a quarter acre of land.
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