A better way to track fund performance

I am sick of watching the value of my portfolio go down and down. It's depressing. I know I know, people like www.mymoneyblog.com and www.simpledollar.com and just about every other money dude would state the "buy and hold" mantra as well as the "you are buying it cheap" dollar cost averaging thing.

They'd also probably tell me not to check my mutual fund balances every day, but that's like asking a kid to sit quietly at an ice cream store/petting zoo/big ball pit/buzz lightyear superstore. Yeah right, of course I am going to look.

Even though I know these things, I still freak out. So my new plan has these features:

• I will still get to look obsessively at something.
  
• The values will always go up.
• When the market is doing terrible, the values will go up even faster, making me happier when the market is bad not depressed.

Here is the plan: monitor the number of shares I own not the cash value of the funds. When the market is cheap, I will buy shares at a faster rate, which will cause the values to increase. That will make me happy, which is the right emotion to feel when the market is slumping.

Additionally, I can estimate what the value of the fund will be in 40 years by compounding it by 8%. So if I want a cash value I can still have it. I can use this cash value to know when to rebalance.

The best (but not best smelling) money making idea ever

Here it is, plain and simple:
Collect dog poop and then burn methane from it to produce electricity

What you don't believe me? If people on a farm that have 2000 cows can produce $2000 of electricity per month, then I can produce $40 per month easy.

Given the number of dogs which pass by my house each day, a simple poop collector outside my house would easily collect enough dodo to make my meter move backwards.

Don't believe me?
Check out these links:

http://newanimalcontrol.org/wastetogas.shtml
http://www.ruralcostarica.com/biogas.html
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/BioFuel/biofuels.htm

I failed you, my audience, please do not go away :(

Although it was fun to hate the government and pretend my financial life was like a video game, it turns out the system is actually fair.

I was wrong about this post:
http://moneyconversations.blogspot.com/2008/03/gaming-taxable-income.html

As evidence by these other sites:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Common/Taxes/2007TaxBrackets.aspx

http://taxes.about.com/od/2008taxes/qt/2008_tax_rates.htm

There may be other taxes or "phase outs" that you can game, but the savings would only be minimal.

Planting trees for your retirement.

I ran across this comment on the simple dollar (see below) http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/06/02/planning-for-the-long-haul-my-familys-lifetime-financial-plan/

I am sure you may have thought of this, but maybe some of your reader’s are less familiar with buying land.
Forested land can often make you money back. Selling the lumber on premise can often pay back a significant amount of the purchase price. Just be sure to use a logger who would respect your desire to keep the mess in your woods to a minimum.
A significantly aged forest for example can get up to $2,000 a acre in lumber. Wait twenty years and repeat.

I wonder if you could buy up 10 acres for $10,000 if that is the case, you could sell the lumber on it and get the acres for free.
Then you plant trees, cost: $2000 or so, wait 20 years, pay 20 years of taxes... maybe that is high like $500 per year.

Seems like you wouldn't make much money and you'd only make the money like twice in your life. That is unless you own like 1000 acres.

for example:
http://www.maineland4sale.com/,, I found 100 acres for $175,000. If it all had trees, the profit would be $200,000.
Then you spend 2 years straight with a staff of 10 workers and replant the whole thing with trees and in 20 years, you have another $200,000 ready there. I'll be age 48, that sounds like about the right time for paying for my kids' college. Then I'll plant another forest. When I am 68, I'll need to buy my retirement home. So I'll just cut down my trees, build a small house on 1 acre of it, and then ask the grand kids to plant another 100 acres of forest, when I am 88, I'll die, and my kids will inherit a nice cash cow.

This place has a bunch of listings:
http://www.landforless.com/cgi-local/search_p_new.cgi?region=1&Northern+Maine=0&Central+Maine=0&Southern+Maine=0&Acreage=3&Amt_from=1&Amt_to=7&Search=Click+Here+to+Search+For+Properties+

Here's an example of a piece of land that would easily be profitable:
it is 100% trees.
If you cut down half of them (35 acres), you could make $70,000 which would pay for the land. The other half of the cut down would be pure profit.

Property ID:

Click here to zoom in on this property
POR_8
Lot: 8
Town: Portage
Location: Northern Maine
Area/Subdivision: Portage Lake
Price Was: $92,900
Price: $69,900
Size: 70.3 Acres
Other Details: No Mobile Homes, Power/phone Near by, Lake Front
Landscape: Trees: 100% Fields:
Financing Options:
$505 Per Month with 30% Down (20 Years, 11 % APR)
$739 Per Month with 15% Down (20 years, 14% APR)

Open questions:
- how long and how much would it cost to replant your land so that a forest will be there 20 years from now?
- is there a machine you can buy that will go replant everything?
- how easy is it to hire up a logging company? Do you need special permissions from the town you buy the land from?
- do you have any ethical problems with destroying a forest and its wild life?

-Greg

Directive

Go buy tons of stuff from here:
http://astore.amazon.com/vegonama-20

Directive

Go buy tons of stuff from here

Gaming the Taxable Income

Hey all.

The truth is out. I have learned what those those mysterious things called "tax brackets" are. They are shown here. Bring on the gaming of the tax system.
Here's the issue:

Imagine if you and your spouse make 130,000 combined. Then you get a huge raise and next year make 134020.

This means that the government will tax you an extra 3% and then you'd be back to making only 130,000 again.

If there was nothing you can do, it would be fine to just accept it. However, there is something you can do.

You have a several buttons on our game pad you can press throughout the year to change your "Taxable Income." The game you are playing is like Sonic the Hedgehog and the little shiny rings are % of your money you take back from the government. If you don't grab enough rings, it's game over. If you get enough you get a 1Up and free extended play. Only 50 rings is worthless, but 100 gets you something.

There are many buttons your can press. They include:
- Contribute more to a 401k.
- Contribute more to charity.
- Flex spending
- Health plan