Nothing special this week. Stagnancy.
I'm at $1215.45, fam. Lost a couple dollars.
On another note, I finally caved and bought my fiancee a new vehicle. She has been in love with Nissan Rogues forever, and we finally found one with AWD that was at a decent price.
Ended up going a loan through State Farm bank, as they were able to get me the quickest information back in order to make my decision about financing. Instant approval on their end, even though I was feeling pretty down about my situation as PNC declined my loan application. We traded in her 2007 Prius, I will be putting down $5,000, and we'll be financing $15k. Not a bad deal for a CPO (certified pre-owned) 2015 AWD crossover.
If you're new to auto loans, feel free to ask me questions. I am familiar both as a consumer and as a banker; I am trained in financing as part of my employment through State Farm and have studied financing of vehicles and mortgages at length.
Best,
Kevin
Monday, August 29, 2016
Monday, August 22, 2016
My road to $1,000,000 post 3
One monthly $100 deposit and 6 or so days of the stock market either taking a dump or stalling, my IRA sits at $1,217.66. Not counting the deposit, it has gained a hefty 37 cents since last week.
While my other brokerage account with Vanguard has seemed to begin to rally today (or perhaps eek out its final positive breath), this past week has been pretty bland, even depressing. The Dow fluctuated around within a 100 or so point range, and many high profile hedge fund managers and stock analysts have all but braced for impact as they anticipate another bubble ready to burst. The permabears of the group point to signs that look eerily similar to what happened before the 09 Recession.
It's difficult, I believe, for many of those who work in finance to NOT be drawn towards cynicism. When someone makes money in the market, after all, someone else loses money. Many a well-constructed argument has been posed for another stock market slide, but there are those, bear and bull alike, who have pitched their arguments to the wind as we witness the recent record highs both of the S&P and the Dow.
Some say that the market is set to drop but then rebound to new heights, while others see a huge foreign bubble that could wreak havoc on the world's economy.
I guess we'll see, though I personally will be as optimistic as possible while simultaneously doing my best to pile a chunk of my portfolio into defensive stocks.
Best,
Kevin
While my other brokerage account with Vanguard has seemed to begin to rally today (or perhaps eek out its final positive breath), this past week has been pretty bland, even depressing. The Dow fluctuated around within a 100 or so point range, and many high profile hedge fund managers and stock analysts have all but braced for impact as they anticipate another bubble ready to burst. The permabears of the group point to signs that look eerily similar to what happened before the 09 Recession.
It's difficult, I believe, for many of those who work in finance to NOT be drawn towards cynicism. When someone makes money in the market, after all, someone else loses money. Many a well-constructed argument has been posed for another stock market slide, but there are those, bear and bull alike, who have pitched their arguments to the wind as we witness the recent record highs both of the S&P and the Dow.
Some say that the market is set to drop but then rebound to new heights, while others see a huge foreign bubble that could wreak havoc on the world's economy.
I guess we'll see, though I personally will be as optimistic as possible while simultaneously doing my best to pile a chunk of my portfolio into defensive stocks.
Best,
Kevin
Monday, August 15, 2016
My road to $1,000,000 Post 2
Short post this week, as not a whole lot has changed.
I had one of my checking accounts set up to deposit $200 into my IRA at the end of each month, but I got impatient. Each paycheck I get sends $100 to a separate checking account from where most of my money goes, so I just deposited $100 after my first pay period into the IRA and deleted the recurring $200 each month.
Nothing has been changed in terms of investment.
As it stands right now, after the market's closed for the day, the IRA's balance is $1,117.29.
Best,
Kevin
I had one of my checking accounts set up to deposit $200 into my IRA at the end of each month, but I got impatient. Each paycheck I get sends $100 to a separate checking account from where most of my money goes, so I just deposited $100 after my first pay period into the IRA and deleted the recurring $200 each month.
Nothing has been changed in terms of investment.
As it stands right now, after the market's closed for the day, the IRA's balance is $1,117.29.
Best,
Kevin
Monday, August 8, 2016
My road to $1,000,000 - post 1
After months of lackluster production and half-assed attempts at themes, the theme of my blog came to me while on a very aggravating walk with my dog. Aggravating in the sense that I know he's not well trained, but I am both too cheap for dog training, and too susceptible to "giving in" to him when he barks or otherwise acts out. But that is for another time.
The goal: to start with $0 in my IRA and push it to $1mil and track what I learned in order to help others possibly make some better choices.
Set up: one Vanguard Roth IRA with $0
(In addition to the IRA, I've got two brokerage accounts currently; one with Vanguard that was gifted to me by my father from his grandfather, and one through TD Ameritrade. My plan is to not count the value of those accounts and to see what I'm able to produce through my own volition, and from scratch)
For those of you not familiar, Vanguard is a financial entity that offers products such as mutual funds and ETFs (exchange-traded funds)
- Mutual fund: an investment program funded by shareholders that trades in diversified holdings and is professionally managed
- Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF): a marketable security that tracks an index, a commodity, bonds, or a basket of assets like an index fund
Vanguard offers a very large selection of funds to choose from; from Long Term Bond Index funds to Energy Sector funds, to the MBS (mortgage backed security) that Ryan Gosling and friends show contributed a great deal to the recession of '08/09. Most of these have a minimum buy-in price, such as $1,000, $3,000, or in the case of one of the larger "Admiral Share" funds, $100,000,000! Admiral Shares are typically just the "better" version of other funds, providing things like lower expense ratios and higher quality asset make-up; more of the Aaa and Aa instead of the lowly B, Bb, and Bbb class securities.
---Also, so as not to assume a certain knowledge level of my non-existent readers, an "expense ratio" refers to the cost of operation of a fund. Most of the funds that Vanguard (and other large financial organizations) offers are managed. People are paid to determine the best stocks to put into mutual/index funds, and they get paid through expense ratios. These expense ratios denote how much money is taken from your fund's value in order to pay for management, among other things. For someone who has $10,000 in a Long Term Bond index fund, their expense ratio is 0.16% and so they will pay $16 for the year that their account is worth $10k. If their account had $20k in the Long Term Bond index fund, they'd pay $32 that year, and so on.
To continue from the above section about minimum buy-ins;
Upon first opening my Roth IRA, I did not have the minimum buy-in amount for the account I wanted to start with ($1,000), so I was only able to invest into the Money Market Settlement fund as there is no minimum buy-in. I invested $100, or $200, or $500 (if I could) into it until I had the minimum $1k buy-in. Since I am 23, I decided to make use of one of the "Target Retirement" funds. These are set up with years noted in the title (for example, 2030, 2045, 2055, etc.) which are supposed to be indicative of the year you plan to retire. I'm 23, I figured I have about 40 years or so until I will retire, so I put my $1,000 into the Target Retirement 2055 fund.
---Separate note on the Target Retirement funds, they reallocate assets as you get closer to retirement. You start out with an aggressive, growth-centric fund (mostly stocks) and ease yourself over to bonds, and then mostly liquid (cash) funds at the end as you age and want to move out of the turbulence of the market.
I put my $1k into the Target Retirement 2055 fund about one week ago and as of right now, it it worth $1,010.14.
Since the market is meant to be utilized as a long-term, many decades long tool, these posts might get tedious. I will try to spice them up with what I've learned from reading business news and economics articles published through various sites.
Best,
Kevin
Some sources:
investopedia.com
vanguard.com
And of course, good ol' wikipedia.com
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Non rant about RG
One of the reasons that I started this blog was because I thought it would get me to write more. I thought that having the medium itself - account, password, plenty of empty virtual pages, the infinite audience of the internet - this would be sufficient motivation to write. I wrote one post a number of weeks ago and have yet to even log into my account since.
Not sure why I've even started this since I don't feel I have the credibility or knowledge needed to really captivate anyone.
I guess I'll just post random shit until a theme comes out.
My fiancee Erika, the cutest little woman ever, is currently working on wedding things for her maid of honor - who she is actually the maid of honor for as well. Our weddings are 3 weeks apart, it's a whole big thing.
She is planning some games for a bridal shower; one in particular where you have cut-outs of male celebrity heads glued to random pics of dudes in suits. She does not seem to find it as funny as I do to make the heads comically large in proportion to the bodies. I think she's lying, and actually loves the idea. Photo of RG attached for reference.
....hey girl. Friday, June 17, 2016
Rant about guns
Orlando can't catch a break. Reason can't either.
In the wake of the most recent gun-enabled mass murder, I find that the defensive logic of hardcore gun enthusiasts becomes even murkier than usual. Statistics and facts are touted by those who claim that, were they in the situation (armed with their .45, or whatever), they would have been able to fend off the surprise rampage of a psychopath with a rather obvious history of violence and instability. This belief is so strong and so widespread that I have seen Facebook posts from a 60+-year-old, overweight grandmother from a rural part of the state in which I live claim that had she been in the general vicinity of that Florida nightclub, she would have mustered the courage, bravado, and reflex of Jason Bourne out of thin air (in addition to the intense, specialized training she lacks) and shut that shooter down before he killed 49 people. This idea that owning any kind of firearm suddenly makes one useful in a live shooter environment is not only horrifically optimistic, it's counter productive to the real issue.
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," claims NRA executive director Wayne LaPierre. I feel the need to amend Mr. LaPierre's statement:
"One of the things that might stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun who is highly trained in the use of that gun, is familiar and experienced with the kinds of situations one might encounter this sort of bad guy and gunfire of any sort, and has the premonition to sense that a murder spree is about to happen with enough time to legitimately help."
Now, I am deeply empathetic to those who feel the need for some sense of security, some individual protection that they feel a firearm affords them. But that seems to be all that it is - the feeling of protection. Numerous studies* show that having that .45 on your person actually makes one more likely to get shot. For many reasons, this makes sense. According to a study done by Professor Charles Branas at the University of Pennsylvania**, carrying a firearm has a significant psychological effect on the carrier. That assumed grandmother's bravado is amplified to the point where effective decision-making ability flies out the window and a heightened sense of survival is point into play. There is a greater chance of a neutral object being perceived as a firearm, not to mention the increased sense of power that may make an otherwise resolvable situation into one that is ultimately life or death for someone.
Facts aside, though, the real point I was initially trying to make was about the skewed data and falsely represented statistics that are the bread and butter of the 2nd Amendment defender's arsenal, no pun intended.
One of the regulars, or at least one I've seen touted about frequently on my own social media, is the claim that "States/cities/countries with the strongest gun control laws actually have the highest levels of gun violence." They then go on to list "liberal" cities like Chicago, LA, Manhattan, and "socialist utopias" like Venezuela (really?), Honduras, and Uraguay being conveniently chosen because the man in question, Bill Whittle of "Firewall", found them to be both non-democratic AND high of the gun-death list. He/they claim that because Honduras (#1 in gun deaths per capita, mind you) has strict gun control laws in place, and it as a country ranks first in that pesky little chart, that there is actually a firm connection between the two. These brings up my personal favorite logical fallacy employed in these arguments: correlation does not imply causation!
Despite the fact that these two things happen to occur at the same time does not, in any way, imply that they are related. Despite the fact that both deal exclusively with gun-related topics, these two things to not *by themselves* make for a sound and valid argument. Saying that, "Hey, look, Honduras, Venezuela, Chicago, New York...they have the strictest gun control laws of their respective municipalities and still have higher per capita gun deaths. That must mean that there are more gun related deaths because of the stricter gun laws!" is egregiously unfair, and it fails to consider the fact that there are more variables at play in these places. It also misconstrues what the presented statistics actually mean.
As someone who works in the finance and insurance industry, I deal with numbers and percentages all the live long day. As someone who has studied LSAT-style logic for longer than 30 minutes, I can tell you how easily people are tricked by the differences between hard, quantifiable numbers and percentages. When someone says, "Honduras is incredibly dangerous, they have 67.18 gun deaths per capita. The USA, on the other hand, only has 10.54 deaths per capita," they are missing an important piece of the puzzle: population.
So what does 67.18 gun deaths per 100k translate to for Honduras? 5,440.23 deaths
What does that measly little 10.54 gun deaths in the US actually mean? 33,612.06 deaths
While the odds of getting shot in the United States are technically lower than they are in Honduras (though it certianly doesn't feel that way), we account for almost 6 times as many lives lost. This doesn't take into account the deaths of our servicemen and women (and the deaths caused BY them), but I'll save that rant for another post.
One might say that it makes sense that we have more deaths, we have more people! I find that unacceptable. Honduras is riddled with crime and propped up by a poorly run government that was, for almost it's entire history, headed up by dictatorships masquerading as fairly elected officials. We claim to be the leaders of the free world, but we bicker our bipartisanily-locked issues like one side is rubber and the other is glue. We need to have fair, productive conversations about the future of this country.
It is unacceptable that these things keep happening. Whether they're done in the name of Chris, Allah, C'Thullu, who the fuck ever, they're done in the name of hate, and hate cannot be the future of this country.
*https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/mar/25/guns-protection-national-rifle-association
**http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/
In the wake of the most recent gun-enabled mass murder, I find that the defensive logic of hardcore gun enthusiasts becomes even murkier than usual. Statistics and facts are touted by those who claim that, were they in the situation (armed with their .45, or whatever), they would have been able to fend off the surprise rampage of a psychopath with a rather obvious history of violence and instability. This belief is so strong and so widespread that I have seen Facebook posts from a 60+-year-old, overweight grandmother from a rural part of the state in which I live claim that had she been in the general vicinity of that Florida nightclub, she would have mustered the courage, bravado, and reflex of Jason Bourne out of thin air (in addition to the intense, specialized training she lacks) and shut that shooter down before he killed 49 people. This idea that owning any kind of firearm suddenly makes one useful in a live shooter environment is not only horrifically optimistic, it's counter productive to the real issue.
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," claims NRA executive director Wayne LaPierre. I feel the need to amend Mr. LaPierre's statement:
"One of the things that might stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun who is highly trained in the use of that gun, is familiar and experienced with the kinds of situations one might encounter this sort of bad guy and gunfire of any sort, and has the premonition to sense that a murder spree is about to happen with enough time to legitimately help."
Now, I am deeply empathetic to those who feel the need for some sense of security, some individual protection that they feel a firearm affords them. But that seems to be all that it is - the feeling of protection. Numerous studies* show that having that .45 on your person actually makes one more likely to get shot. For many reasons, this makes sense. According to a study done by Professor Charles Branas at the University of Pennsylvania**, carrying a firearm has a significant psychological effect on the carrier. That assumed grandmother's bravado is amplified to the point where effective decision-making ability flies out the window and a heightened sense of survival is point into play. There is a greater chance of a neutral object being perceived as a firearm, not to mention the increased sense of power that may make an otherwise resolvable situation into one that is ultimately life or death for someone.
Facts aside, though, the real point I was initially trying to make was about the skewed data and falsely represented statistics that are the bread and butter of the 2nd Amendment defender's arsenal, no pun intended.
One of the regulars, or at least one I've seen touted about frequently on my own social media, is the claim that "States/cities/countries with the strongest gun control laws actually have the highest levels of gun violence." They then go on to list "liberal" cities like Chicago, LA, Manhattan, and "socialist utopias" like Venezuela (really?), Honduras, and Uraguay being conveniently chosen because the man in question, Bill Whittle of "Firewall", found them to be both non-democratic AND high of the gun-death list. He/they claim that because Honduras (#1 in gun deaths per capita, mind you) has strict gun control laws in place, and it as a country ranks first in that pesky little chart, that there is actually a firm connection between the two. These brings up my personal favorite logical fallacy employed in these arguments: correlation does not imply causation!
Despite the fact that these two things happen to occur at the same time does not, in any way, imply that they are related. Despite the fact that both deal exclusively with gun-related topics, these two things to not *by themselves* make for a sound and valid argument. Saying that, "Hey, look, Honduras, Venezuela, Chicago, New York...they have the strictest gun control laws of their respective municipalities and still have higher per capita gun deaths. That must mean that there are more gun related deaths because of the stricter gun laws!" is egregiously unfair, and it fails to consider the fact that there are more variables at play in these places. It also misconstrues what the presented statistics actually mean.
As someone who works in the finance and insurance industry, I deal with numbers and percentages all the live long day. As someone who has studied LSAT-style logic for longer than 30 minutes, I can tell you how easily people are tricked by the differences between hard, quantifiable numbers and percentages. When someone says, "Honduras is incredibly dangerous, they have 67.18 gun deaths per capita. The USA, on the other hand, only has 10.54 deaths per capita," they are missing an important piece of the puzzle: population.
So what does 67.18 gun deaths per 100k translate to for Honduras? 5,440.23 deaths
What does that measly little 10.54 gun deaths in the US actually mean? 33,612.06 deaths
While the odds of getting shot in the United States are technically lower than they are in Honduras (though it certianly doesn't feel that way), we account for almost 6 times as many lives lost. This doesn't take into account the deaths of our servicemen and women (and the deaths caused BY them), but I'll save that rant for another post.
One might say that it makes sense that we have more deaths, we have more people! I find that unacceptable. Honduras is riddled with crime and propped up by a poorly run government that was, for almost it's entire history, headed up by dictatorships masquerading as fairly elected officials. We claim to be the leaders of the free world, but we bicker our bipartisanily-locked issues like one side is rubber and the other is glue. We need to have fair, productive conversations about the future of this country.
It is unacceptable that these things keep happening. Whether they're done in the name of Chris, Allah, C'Thullu, who the fuck ever, they're done in the name of hate, and hate cannot be the future of this country.
*https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/mar/25/guns-protection-national-rifle-association
**http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/
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