Kirby on Finance

Cheap Dating for the Rich at Heart!

This is the first post in my series on cheap dating. I’ve titled the series “Cheap Dating for the Rich at Heart,” mainly because I love a cheesy title when it comes to something romantic. Every Friday I’ll post a cheap dating idea for you to use over the weekend and offer a small “guide” into making that dating idea a reality. If you put one of these ideas into practice, please let me know! Just use the “Contact Me” option on the right!

This week’s idea is a classic one for the guys out there - take your date on an unexpected picnic! Let’s just be honest here, if it’s completely unexpected, this will improve your standing with the “lucky lady” by leaps and bounds. You get the kudos of a nice meal at a fine restaurant and an unexpected bouquet of flowers for pennies on the dollar in terms of costs.

Other than food and beverages, here are some general things that you’ll want to bring:

Blankets and Pillows (Unless you’re using a bench or rock - figure this out BEFORE!!!)
Plates/Napkins/Utensiles/Cups
Condiments
Trash Bag
Music (optional)
Something to clean hands

The best part of a picnic is that you get to control all the costs because you pick the place and what’s being served. Since both are VERY crucial to making this frugal date work, let’s look at each individually:

Place:
Naturally, we’ll assume that you’ll try to pull this date off when the weather’s pleasant. The typical place would be a local park, but you might want to think outside the box a bit - if you met in high school, perhaps somewhere on the campus of the school? If you’re just going to goto a park, make sure to use Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) to best locate where you’re going to have the picnic. There’s no suave way to pull off driving around lost or asking for directions. You want this to go smoothly, so you might want to make sure you know of where the place is BEFORE the date.

What to serve:
Really you can serve just about anything! Here are a few websites that will offer ideas if you want to try and whip up something special for the date:

Easy Picnic Food [Cooks.com]
Picnic Recipes
Memorial Day BBQ Recipes [Razzle Dazzle Recipes]
If you decide to try this cheap date for the rich at heart, I hope it goes well! I’d love to hear your stories about this date, and any other frugal dates that you may have been on recently!

Tags: cheap, cheap dating, dating, frugal, Frugal Living, saving money

Have we lost our ability to think critically?

I love reading articles that make a case for doing something completely opposite of what you’d expect. It’s not that I’m a contrarian at heart (though some say I am), it’s because I think when you’re presented with options, you’ll behoove yourself to truly know the advantages and disadvantages of each. I also think that when given a clear cut choice that’s best for you, you gain a better understanding and are more likely to stick with it if you fully understand the choice you’ve made.

That’s what I had in mind when I wrote:

Are you saving too much?

Does giving to charity hurt your bottom line?

From reading books and blogs dealing with finance, I see a lot of ideas thrown out there with very little critical analysis behind them. That’s not to say that the advice given isn’t correct, because a lot of it is. But you have to wonder how much of the information we receive relating to pretty much anything is just a large collection of group think. How many articles do you see that quote to another article? Almost every single one! Then you go to the original article and end up finding that a lot of the analysis in it is pretty weak.

I’ll be honest with you, I’m guilty of it too. It’s really easy to piggyback on the writing of another and produce a quick and thoughtful post. I’m sure I’ll still do it sometimes, but with this blog I really want to try and break through a little bit and present other sides of arguments that other writers, pundits, and bloggers have put out there. I think one of the important skills we’re losing in our society is that of critical thinking. We depend so much on other telling us what to do that we’ve lost the ability to do it ourselves. So, my goal is to make Kirby on Finance a bit more critical, not really in a viscous way, but in a way that will hopefully promote thought and conversation. I hope you’ll continue to visit, come back often, and if I light a little fire up under you, you’ll become a bit more critical yourself!

Tags: critical thinking

Is Your Own Ego Your Worst Enemy?

Yesterday I wrote about the pitfalls of emotional investing. I view emotional investing as the psychological consequence of our own weaknesses having exposing themselves. Emotional spending and investing are created by our own perceived weaknesses, but just as a perceived weakness can cause us to handle our money poorly, so can an unreasonable perceived strength - an ego.

I’ve been guilty of it myself - a couple solid stock trades and I think I’m the next Jim Cramer. Shoot, I’ve been known to feel a little bit like David Bach after I have a good month with staying on budget. This isn’t to say that being successful isn’t worth patting yourself on the back, because a little self-congratulating is always helpful when you’ve put a lot of work into something.

The problem is that when a little self-congratulation takes the form of an ego, we tend to make careless errors on a much bigger scale than we would have before we picked up an ego. If it’s dealing with finances, we may decided that we can make a bigger ticket item purchase because we can “budget” it into making sense. If we’re dealing with investing, we may decide to get after an even more speculative stock because we’ve “gotten good” and finding the needles in the proverbial investing haystack.

The trick is to stay grounded. This means being accountable with yourself at all times. I’ve found the best way to stay grounded after any form of success is to give myself a fair assessment of what I did right, but always find areas to improve. I know this sounds like a real bummer, but if you can let yourself enjoy success but never be satisfied with it, you’ll set yourself up for even greater victories in the future. Of course you can take the time to smell the roses, but think about it - successful people in vastly different areas are never satisfied with the successes they have, they just don’t let it go to their head. Think about Tiger Woods, he keeps winning, breaking records, but he also keeps finding areas to improve. It’s really no surprise that he’s consistently at the top of his game is it?

Tags: bonds, ego, emotions, Investing, investment strategy, stocks

Emotional Investing Doesn’t Work!

Last week a few stocks that I owned began to sell so quickly that I thought my broker had begun to just burn the stock certificates themselves. I began to panic because I thought a few of them were overbought and ready for a crash. Luckily the other part of my brain, the part that’s always calm and rational took over. A few of the stocks that I owned had no business selling like they were, and the ones that may have been overbought had strong arguments as to why they were still good buys for the long term. I decided not to sell. This decision saved me roughly $342 dollars as of the time that I write this.

I’m not writing this to brag that I was able to control my emotions and avoid panic selling. I often succumb to those feelings, but this time I avoided it. In fact, every time I’ve either bought a stock that I had no business buying, or sold a stock that ended up going on a nice run, I look back and try to figure out why I made the move that I did.

I’ve been looking toward growth stocks to avoid the daily stress of momentum stocks, but in the past I’ve usually bought stocks that were on an upward tear. It’s worked well for me, but the stress of doing it just magnifies all of my weaknesses. This has allowed me to figure out what triggers my emotional selling so that I may notice it and hopefully avoid it before I make the same mistakes again.

Jason Zweig of Money Magazine recently wrote an article addressing these issues and offered a few ways to help outsmart your brain and keep those rash, emotional decisions at bay.

“Whether your investments beat the market is largely outside your control. But some things are entirely in your hands: cutting your tax and brokerage bills by trading less often, and keeping your expenses down by relying on index funds or lower-cost managed funds.”

I think this is pretty good advice but really you do have much more control than Jason suggests. You’ve got to be able to research a company and know exactly why you wish to own it before you invest. If you can’t offer reasons as to why the stock would also be a bad purchase then you’ll probably not done enough homework to invest.

“If watching financial TV or clicking on investing Web sites gives you the itch to get rich quick, turn off the sound or use the “history” window on your Web browser to count how many times you visit the site each day. Just like a smoker trying to quit, you may need tricks like these to help bolster your self-control.”

This is right on the money. You don’t make a lot of money off the market overnight. If done well its continuous growth over time that will make you rich.

“Making an investing decision while you’re inflamed by the hope of a big gain is a terrible idea. Instead, reconsider after your anticipation circuits have cooled off. If you like a stock, try waiting two weeks without ever checking its price. Then study the company’s financial reports to estimate the per-share value of the business. Afterward, you can check the current share price—and invest only if the business value is higher.”

This goes along with what I said above. It’s rare in life that snap judgments work, and it’s probably even less likely that it’ll work in the stock market.

Tags: emotional investing, emotions, Investing, stocks

The 5 Best Ways to Save Money at Starbucks

1. Take your own cup - You can shave 10 cents off the price of your beverage if you bring your own cup. Avoid the expensive reusable cups that they sell in Starbucks and buy the cheaper version sold in Wal-Mart.

2. Just Get Coffee - Just get the regular ole’ black coffee. You can dress it up with the free milk, cream, and sugar that they provide in the store. You’ll save a lot of money and you control the amount of calories that go into the coffee.

3. Order a Short Cappuccino - You can order a “short” cappuccino that isn’t listed on the menu, but they’ll serve it to you anyway. It has the same amount of espresso as the 12-ounce tall, but is small and cheaper. Also, because it has less milk a froth in it, it even tastes better!

4. Try the infamous “Ghetto” Latte - A buddy of mine actually does this - order yourself one, two or three shots of espresso in a large cup. Then fill the rest of the cup up with the free milk they provide in the store. Then drink it cold, or microwave the drink and you’ll have a “Ghetto” Latte!

5. Use a gift card - Look on eBay for people selling gift cards that have value on them. You can usually shave off a few bucks from the price you’d pay if you filled up a gift card at the store. Be careful though, make sure you purchase for a reputable seller! Also, you can use a Coin Star machine to take your change and pay you in the form of a Starbucks gift card - you won’t have to pay the processing fee!

10 Ways to Save Money at Starbucks [TheStreet.com]

Tags: best ways to save money, cheap, Coffee, Frugal Living, gift card, gift cards, short cappuccino, starbucks, ways to save money

McDonald’s coffee a better option than Starbucks?

Sometimes when I need a quick coffee fix on my way to class in the morning, I’ll stop by the McDonalds that’s right by my house. I usually stop there because I know that i’ll be able to get in, get my coffee, and get out. It doesn’t help that it’s fairly cheap! Little did I know, I was saving money and getting better coffee over Starbucks!

McDonald’s introduced a line of premium coffee that earned first place in this month’s Consumer Reports issue for best in coffee. The brand beat out Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and Burger King (BKC, news, msgs) for both taste and value.

Now McDonald’s is branching out into espresso drinks. The fast-food chain, based in Oak Brook, Ill., has begun introducing McCafe concept restaurants in select locations in the United States with comfy couches, cappuccinos and pastries that look more like the neighborhood Starbucks than your typical Mickey D’s.

Brewing up a strong brand of coffee [MSN Money]

Tags: mcdonald's, Saving, starbucks