A System for Automating Your Personal Finances

Are you one of the people that get a paper paycheck, even though your employer offers direct deposit? Or maybe you get bills sent to you in the mail requiring you to keep track of due dates, write a check out, dig through the junk drawer to find a stamp, and then drop the payment in the outgoing mail, even though you could be receiving paperless statements and automatic bill payment?

In the past, and we’re talking the 1990’s, most of us were wasting hours of our lives handling our personal...

KEEP READING

By Chris Reining / 0 Comments

Using Google Spreadsheet to Track a Stock Portfolio

I use a Google Sheet to track my stock portfolio. This is an example of what the spreadsheet looks like. If you just want to download a copy scroll to the bottom of this page.

I chose Google Sheets because it can query Google Finance to pull market data. This helps me identify which stocks in my portfolio are reaching a trigger point where I may want to buy, which I typically base on P/E ratio.

Google...

KEEP READING

By Chris Reining / 58 Comments

Using History Lessons to Create Wealth

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana, from Reason In Common Sense

A classic example of the aforementioned quote is Hitler’s invasion of Russia. Napoleon had done it once and Hitler made the same mistake, suffering the same fate. On both occasions, the Russians simply retreated drawing the enemy further and further into Russia in their advance, and then when the Russian winter struck and the invaders found themselves unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with it, they were killed in their...

KEEP READING

By Chris Reining / 2 Comments

3 Reasons Not To Invest In An Index Fund

I’m always amazed at how many personal finance blogs recommend investing in index funds. There was a recent post at Money Q&A where Hank asked 12 personal finance bloggers where they would recommend an investor put $1,000.

Out of the 12 bloggers one said individual stocks and the rest effectively said an index or mutual fund.

Yes, I think an index fund is better than stuffing money under your mattress, or having inflation eat away at it in a savings account, but a lot of people are missing...

KEEP READING

By Chris Reining / 32 Comments