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Check your inbox because I’m happy to announce that I emailed the winners of the $200 giveaway! Thank you for joining and remember to keep subscribed to my RSS feed and email because more giveaways are coming as the subscriber count passed 600!!
Note that I didn’t list the email pattern as done in the past because we ended up having two winners with the same email pattern for the HP SD Card Reader which I ended up honoring without letting everyone know
Good luck on future giveaways!!!
Only Last day to enter the $200 giveaway! CLICK HERE for another chance to win big!
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Winners of The Quiet Millionaire Giveaway and Another Contest Tomorrow
Celebrating 500+ Subscribers and $200 To Give Away To My Loyal Readers

Original post by MoneyNing

A couple of weeks ago, I described a particularly interesting interview that I faced during my ongoing job hunt. Throughout the entire job search process, I had several other interesting learning experiences and thought it may be appropriate to condense some of them in this blog post.
Below is a compilation of some salient points that resulted either from my personal experience or from discussions with friends, peers, interviewers, and current and former bosses. Although, this is a fairly long post, it is certainly not intended to be any kind of a “comprehensive guide” for job search - so feel free to voice your opinions (positive or negative) on the subject.
1. Keywords in your resume are important: This was a disappointment to me, but this is what I have observed (perhaps people in different industries have different ways of doing things) - your resume is essentially worthless without some keywords […]

Original post by golbguru

I’ll be closing on my home next month and, I think, I have everything under control. But I’m still getting anxious about the whole deal. So, what am I anxious about ?

Buying a house. The biggest investment I have ever made.
20% down payment. A very large chunk of my savings is going to vanish from savings account.
The closing table, where there will be attorneys, Realtor, builder etc. who have done this quite a few times.

So I thought I’ll get some more information about the whole closing process and what really happens at the closing table.(Motley Fool Information)
Who will be present?
You, the buyer, will be present, along with your team, which likely includes your real estate agent and your settlement attorney. If you have an especially amiable and service-oriented mortgage broker, he may be there on your behalf as well, though that is unlikely.
On the […]

Original post by Everything Finance

No matter how frugal we are, everyone eventually ends up spending money. Christmas is coming up so the need to make difficult buying decisions will fall onto our shoulders. It is at these times that people who are frugal can really spend much less money than people who aren’t.
It is also during these holiday times when our wish list suddenly pushes itself onto the forefront of our minds. Not every wish list item is created equal however. Some can cost tens of dollars while others can be hundreds, if not thousands.
We cannot buy everything and probably cannot even afford some items on the list. I for instance can scratch the Ferrari off this Christmas’ shopping list so let’s not focus on those. Do we just buy the most expensive item on the list that’s remaining? Is putting a monetary value to it appropriate?
What do you think? How do you decide […]

Original post by MoneyNing

Billy always convinces me to buy and sell stocks at the perfect time.  He must be a billionaire because he always asks me to give some of it up as he probably doesn’t need anymore.  When there is a selloff in stocks, he tells me to follow because that’s probably when the market is at its bottom; while the opposite is true too because he always tells me to buy stocks when everyone is optimistic, signaling a top in the stock market.
A few years ago, 2003 to be exact, Billy told me “It’s time to sell your stocks!  Look at your negative returns!  Cash out your index funds because you should put your money somewhere else!”  He is really good because the next few years turned out to be great for the stock market.  A couple of days ago when everyone was selling stocks, he tries to convince me again […]

Original post by MoneyNing

Yep, it is true, I just switched over to Geico and saved $330 per year on my car insurance. From what I have seen of Geico so far, they appear to be very promising. But, I don’t think the truth really comes out with insurance companies until you actually have a claim. I will let you know when/if that day comes.
I was with AAA before and I was deliberately paying more than the average for the sake of convenience. I knew my agent well enough that I could email her or call her directly, rather than talking to a random agent, like I will likely have to do with Geico.
I try to shop around once a year for insurance rates, and for whatever reason the price gap increased since last time I checked. For the same amount of coverage $330 was a bit too much to pay for my […]

Original post by bob

WaMu has come up with a new kind of mortgage product called Mortgage Plus, that allows you to Switch Between Fixed and Variable Rate Mortgage with no Closing Costs. Below is the article explaining this new product.
A new product from Washington Mutual lets borrowers shift from fixed to variable and back again on a dime.By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writerNEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — There’s a new kind of mortgage in town - and it’s very limber.
Usually, when borrowers want to restructure their mortgages - go from a fixed-rate to a variable rate, for example - they have to refinance, an onerous, expensive process. There are new closing costs, legal fees and title search and insurance fees that could add thousands of dollars to the mortgage principals.
But the new product from Washington Mutual (Charts, Fortune 500) (WaMu), called Mortgage Plus, gives customers the ability to switch the type of loan […]

Original post by Everything Finance

We spent our Thanksgiving weekend in New Orleans and did what people are supposed to do in New Orleans - eat jambalaya, eat beignets, travel in trams streetcars (see Lauren’s comment below), walk on Bourbon Street, watch alligators, and just take it easy.
There were a few interesting episodes regarding our stay - especially related to our “five star” hotel, but I will write about that in a couple of days. For now, here are a few snaps to capture a part of the awesome spirit of New Orleans. It’s too bad you can’t hear the jazz music playing in the background through the photographs.
By the way, this was our second visit to the city; the first one being just a couple of months before Hurricane Katrina. In spite of all the pain and suffering that New Orleans experienced after the hurricane, it was nice to see that […]

Original post by golbguru

You have to be a Vulcan to remain unrattled by the November blizzard that knocked the TSX index off by nearly 8%. All of a sudden, the market has become pessimistic, and rightfully so as many indicators are foreseeing a recession looming. It will suck if a recession storms in uninvited. After all, who will spoil us with dividend increases when cash flows aren’t there?
While many investors have their tongue frozen to the credit crunch pole, the conservative ones are now keeping their portfolios warm and toes-curled under a blanket of utility, consumer stable and health care stocks; ones that deliver essential products and services to the general population irrespective of the market cycle we’re in.
What are some of our basic needs? Food, water, electricity and heating. Last week, I highlighted Borelax Power Income Fund, which owns 10 power plants in Quebec and […]

Original post by Financial Jungle Guy

He probably wouldn’t now, but he may have 18 months ago…
One up on Wall Street
A few years back I read Peter Lynch’s classic One up on Wall Street, which is a great book for any beginning investor (as I was) to read. Lynch is arguably one of the top ten investors of all time and his success was largely based on his ability NOT to follow the crowd and looking for opportunities where others missed them.
One of the points that Peter mentions in the book is that often times the biggest winners pop up around us (in the shopping mall, grocery store, etc.) and the smaller investor stumbles upon them before Wall Street ever takes notice. If the smaller investor buys into the winning stock before the Wall Street investors do - they are going to benefit greatly from being in early. As he mentions, Wall Street generally has […]

Original post by bob