THIS OFFER HAS EXPIRED
There is a new promotion for Restaurant.com certificates:
Save 60% off $25 Gift Certificates and receive a Free $10 Gift Certificate. Use code HARVEST and pay $4 through 11/13/08.
The promotion ends on Thursday November 13th.
I have used these at my steak house in the past and they worked great. But if you're interested in getting them then first: Check the Restaurant.com site and see what restaurants in your area take the certificates. Second check out the rules and limitations for the gift certificates. For example my steak house requires a minimum purchase of $50 to use the $25 certificate and they require a mandatory 18% gratuity. Lastly I wouldn't recommend buying them unless you plan to use them shortly. The restaurants that accept the certificates can change over time.
For more on saving money at restaurants see my older posts:
November 11, 2008
Restaurant.com $25 certificate for $4 plus free $10 certificate ends Thursday Nov 13
November 10, 2008
Updown : down -16%
My Updown performance has been pretty poor lately. I'm down 16% total since March when I started. The S&P 500 is down almost 30% for the period while the Dow and NASDAQ are both off about 28%.
Only a couple of my stock picks are positive overall right now. AT&T and Walmart are both up roughly 3% from what I paid for them.
I put around $280k into about half a dozen REITs and they have lost around 20-20% so far as a group. Buying the REITs was a long term investment with the assumption that the REIT market would recover in a couple years and in the time being their high dividend yields would help add to my returns. The REITs are yielding 15-30% each from dividends.
While my performance in Updown hasn't been anything to brag about lately, I think its a fun game and helps me learn more about picking stocks.
OK Book : How to Pinch a Penny Till It Screams
This is a review of the book How to Pinch a Penny Till It Screams by Rochelle LaMotte McDonald. The copy I read was published in 1994.
The book presents a variety of cost cutting tips. There are probably a few hundred tips overall. There are a number of chapters organizing the information into a few broad categories: grocery bills, housing, energy, car costs, leisure time and others.
Most of the the tips in How to Pinch a Penny Till It Screams are pretty basic in nature and covered in a variety of other resources. There are few suggestions that were new to me personally. There were also a couple tips that I strongly disagreed with. At one point the author suggested leasing a car and in another section they said renting furniture. Neither of these are generally going to be a frugal route and I don't think they belong in a book that is about penny pinching.
How to Pinch a Penny Till It Screams wouldn't be a bad read. It presents the tips in easily digestible way so you can easily skim through the book and capture any new information and make sure you're not missing anything. But the book is really geared towards the beginner audience. If you're already pretty frugal and consider yourself familiar with cost saving measures then this book isn't for you.
So, overall I'd recommend the book marginally for someone who is a beginner to penny pinching. How to Pinch a Penny Till It Screams isn't bad for a quick skim. But I don't give it a strong recommendation since it doesn't cover advanced topics much and virtually everything in it is pretty common cost savings practices. I'm sure there are better books out there on this topic. I give it an 'ok' recommendation only for beginners. Check to see if your library has a copy.
November 9, 2008
Lazy portfolios easily beating S&P 500
A while ago I mentioned Lazy Investing. The idea is discussed at the Marketwatch article on lazy portfolios. Simply put the concept of lazy investing is to place your investments into a simple mix of mutual funds. For example the Margaritaville portfolio is made up of 33% each of Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities (VIPSX), Vanguard Total International Stock Index (VGTSX), and Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTSMX).
Lazy portfolios are nice because you are well diversified across different types of investments. They include such things as emerging markets, US large caps, bonds, fixed income, energy, REITs, etc. Plus they are very simple to implement and generally using low expense Vanguard funds.
But how well do lazy portfolios do versus simply throwing all your money into the S&P 500?
The S&P 500 has not done very well in the past few months (thats an understatement). The index is off over 33% from its high earlier this year over 1500. The S&P is even down about 10% for the past 5 year period.
Lets compare the performance of the S&P to a few of the Lazy portfolios over the past 10 year period. Below I look at a few of the lazy portfolios and figure how they've performed for the past 10 years. The performance numbers I'm using here are the 10 year return figures quoted on the Vanguard site as of Oct. 31st.
S&P 500 alone:
| Fund | Allocation | Return |
| VFINX | 15% | 3% |
Return = 3%
Margaritaville portfolio:
| Fund | Allocation | Return |
| VIPSX | 33% | 7.44% |
| VGTSX | 33% | 6.16% |
| VTSMX | 33% | 3.94% |
Combined return has been = 5.8%
Yale University Unconventional Portfolio
| Fund | Allocation | Return |
| VIPSX | 15% | 7.44% |
| VGSIX | 20% | 12.18% |
| VUSTX | 15% | 5.99% |
| VEIEX | 5% | 14.40% |
| VDMIX | 15% | 1.80% |
| VTSMX | 30% | 3.94% |
Combined return of = 6.6%
Aronson Family Portfolio
| Fund | Allocation | Return |
| VFINX | 15% | 3% |
| VEIEX | 20% | 14.40% |
| VEURX | 5% | 5.01% |
| VEXMX | 10% | 6.93% |
| VWEHX | 5% | 3.72% |
| VIPSX | 10% | 7.44% |
| VUSTX | 5% | 5.99% |
| VPACX | 15% | 5.96% |
| VISGX | 5% | 8.68% |
| VISVX | 5% | 9.77% |
| VTSMX | 5% | 3.94% |
Combined return of = 7.5%
So while the S&P 500 fund had a 3% return for the given 10 year period, these three lazy portfolios have had returns of 5.8%, 6.6% and 7.5%.
Each of these lazy portfolios is doing far better than the S&P 500 alone. Even a little bit of easy diversification with the Margaritaville portfolio gives you nearly double the return. Now this might be simply due to the S&P performing horribly in the specific time period. But in general thats a good example of yow if you diversify your investments you stand to have a more reliable return. Rather than run the risk of having all your eggs in the one basket that has very bad returns, spread the money around a few places and average out the return. Lazy portfolios are a very simple way to diversify and give you decent return with low volatility.
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