Updown performance : Dec. 2011 to May 2012

I haven't been tracking or updating my Updown  performance for a while.   I looked back and realized my last update was in Sept. 2011.   I haven't been actively trading in the account in that time either so what I've got there has ended up in a buy-and-hold strategy simply due to neglect.

Here's the most recent performance of my account compared to the S&P 500:

	Freeby50	S&P 500	diff.
Dec-11	4%	0.80%	3.2%
Jan-12	2.8%	4.4%	-1.6%
Feb-12	2.4%	4.1%	-1.7%
Mar-12	2%	3.10%	-1.1%
Apr-12	-0.4%	-0.8%	0.4%
May-12	-1.60%	-6.30%	4.7%

In total for the 6 months I'm up 9.4% and the S&P 500 gained 5.0%.

A large portion of my holdings are in ABT, MSFT, T and WMT.   Those 4 stocks are about 39% of my total.   All four of them have had pretty good appreciation in the past 6 months. 

ABT up 15%
MSFT up 17%
T up 15%
WMT up 17%

The remaining 61% of my portfolio was up only about 5.6% overall.  So those 4 stocks had a big impact on my overall performance.

My bigger losers were the following 3 stocks which only accounted for about 6% of my holdings:
MPW down 4%
NMM down 6%
WIN down 15%

The other stocks in my portfolio were up 10.7% overall.

Overall the remaining 55% of my assets gained 7% in the 6 months.    The rest of my stocks were up or down within 5-10%.   Many of them were effectively flat in the 6 month period.   

Overall a few winners raised my performance ~4% and a few losers dropped it by ~1%.   

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Frugal Options for Renting a Truck

I don't own a truck.   I don't need to haul stuff enough to warrant the purchase of a truck.   Usually I beg a favor from a friend of mine when I need to haul something or I just rent a truck.   I honestly prefer not to pester my friend cause I think it might be annoying for him to have to constantly haul stuff for people.   If I do ask him then I always offer to buy him dinner or something like that to make it fair.    The better option for me is to rent a truck.

You can rent a truck at various places.   I once rented a truck from Home Depot in order to haul a ladder home.   That was pretty easy and didn't cost much.   I've also rented a truck (actually a van) from Uhaul to haul some junk to the dump.   I'm not thrilled with the experience with Uhaul in general but it got the job done.     Some rental car companies also rent out trucks.   Not all rental car agencies have trucks in their fleet but at least Enterprise does in my area.    One more option for truck rental is Zipcar.   They seem to now have trucks in their fleets.

Hourly or Daily rates
Sometimes I only need a truck for maybe an hour or less. That was the case when I hauled the ladder I bought at Home Depot.    The Uhaul we needed for several hours so renting it for a day was the better option. 

Varying Pricing
I compared prices for the 4 different options for either 1 hour or 1 day rentals. 

	daily	Hourly	miles
Uhaul*	$19.99	n/a	$0.59
Enterprise	$82.46	n/a	$0
Zipcar*	$60-100	$10-14	$0
HomeDepot*	$69	$19	$0

*The pricing here may or may not include all charges like taxes or insurance.  The Enterprise rental charge seemed to include everything but I'm not sure on the others.

Zipcar prices for truck rentals actually vary from city to city but seem to be in the $10-14 range, but Ionly checked a few cities.

Quickly looking at that table above it seems to me that Zipcar would be the cheapest way to go for 1 hour and Uhaul would be least expensive for a 1 day rental.    However  theres a couple things to consider.   The Zipcar rental is only most practical if you're already a member and/or if you would rent a truck fairly frequently.   They have a $60 annual membership fee that you'd have to take into account.   So if you only rent a truck 1-2 times a year then Zipcar would not be very practical.   For the Uhaul rental you'll notice they are the only one that has an extra charge per mile driven.   The fairly steep 59¢ rate will add up quickly if your truck related errand requires much driving.   If I drove to our rental on the other side of town that would be a 60 mile round trip and cost me an extra $35.40.

Depending on what kind of trips you need to make with a rental truck any one of the four companies could potentially be the best choice.

If you make this kind of trip : then this company might be best...

Frequent short trips : Zipcar
Occasional short trips : Homedepot
Occasional time consuming trips : Uhaul
Occasional longer distance trips : Enterprise
Frequent long distance trips : Zipcar

Of course the availability and rates vary from city to city so you'll want to check the details where you live.

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Best of Blog Posts for Week of June 22nd

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week.

MyMoneyBlog has a promo American Express Serve Opening Bonuses that can net you $25 for a new Serve account
MMB also points to another deal for 100 Free American Airlines Miles  which would also be a good way to reset your AA miles expiration date.
Lastly MMB also shares Which Fuel-Efficient Cars Are Worth The Extra Money? 


ConsumerismCommentary wonders Should Rich Families Leave Their Wealth to Their Children?

fivecentnickel discusses I’m Not Covered? Five Ways to Trigger Nasty Insurance Surprises

Bargaineering has a nice list of 100 Ways to Save on Electricity

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The Cost of Womens Clothing and Inflation (or Deflation)

Over time generally you can expect costs to go up due to inflation.   However, not all goods see increases in prices over time.   Televisions for example keep dropping in price.    Another example of lower prices can be found in apparel items.   Clothing has dropped in price gradually over the past couple decades.   The BLS Consumer Price Indexes tracks prices for many general product categories.  

Here is the trend for the past couple decades for the 'womens apparel' general category:

That is seasonally adjusted data using 1982-84 as baseline 100 index value.   The BLS will adjust figures based on regular seasonal fluctuations in prices.   To help understand what that means, lets look at the unadjusted raw numbers:

As you can see from this graph it gives a nice illustration of how the cost of womens apparel goes up and down regularly based on seasonal cycles.   The prices for apparel go up in the fall and down in the winter then up in the spring then down in the summer.   Up and down up and down over every year. This is a regular repeating pattern we see in the above chart.   The BLS has observed this seasonal cycle and then figures how much the prices vary based on just the season of the year.  Once the impact of the seasonal cycle is determined they can add or subtract that difference to obtain the seasonally adjusted prices.

As you can see from both graphs, the prices for womens apparel has been on a downward trend for the past 20 years.   From 1992 to 2011 the price index dropped from 129 to 109 or down about 15.5%.   Just last year the prices started to go back up.    From May '11 to May '12 the prices have gone up about 5.4%.

Going back even further we can see a longer trend.   The BLS has data on the womens apparel price index to at least 1978.  Here's the seasonally adjusted data from 1978 to May 2012:

That shows us that the deflation of apparel prices are a more recent trend.  From 1978 to 1991 the prices were on a clear upward trend.   Only around 1992 did the deflation start.

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