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Daily Links: Great Lessons Edition Print
Monday, 9th March 2009 (by J.D.)This article is about Spare Change
My guest-post marathon continues! During my recent prolific streak, I churned out a bunch of articles for other sites. These stories have been appearing over the past two weeks, and another one went up today. The Art of Manliness has posted my list of great lessons from great men. Though this article isn’t about personal finance, I’m quite pleased with it.
Meanwhile, here are a few other financial stories from around the web:
At Gen X Finance, Jeremy covers a topic I’ve been meaning to explore since I started GRS. He urges readers to invest in your most valuable asset: invest in yourself. “Investing in yourself can yield returns far greater than any other investment,” he writes, and I agree. Jeremy says that you should invest in your health, invest in your personal self, and invest in your professional self. Self-improvement is a very real part of personal finance. This is a great article, but I still hope to offer my own take on this subject sometime in the future. (Also great at Gen X Finance: It feels like I’m just throwing money away, so why should I keep investing?)
Yahoo! News has an Associated Press article that asks the question, “When the economy bottoms out, how will we know?” “The Associated Press examined three markets — housing, jobs and stocks — and asked experts where things stand and how to know when they’ve hit bottom. None of them expects it to come anytime soon.” For me, the important bit is that many experts think the stock market will hit bottom sometime this summer.
Finally, while doing research for future articles, I found a spending plan worksheet [15k PDF] at Rutgers University. This is a part of their personal finance section, which includes financial spreadsheets, calculators, printouts, a financial fitness calendar, and more. It even includes a home-study course about investing.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Thanks for the kind words and the mention, J.D.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
I read The Art of Manliness guest post — excellent piece.
Jeremy makes a great point. Investing in ourselves is the only way to improve our lives and bring about change.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:55 am
I believe that there are many interesting readings but what i would like to know is which is the first reading i should choose regarding ways of managing my budget?
March 10th, 2009 at 4:40 am
Rutgers University seems to often lead the way in doing bigger things then most of their IVY league associates do.
I have look through their resources and they are offering a lot of good information for free.
As I tell people constantly at budgetingsense.com is you need to educate yourself, well Rutgers is doing their part by supplying a wealth of information. Now we all need to do our part and use it to educate yourselves.
Learning is a continuous improvement process.
March 10th, 2009 at 7:01 am
Even better idea - get your company to invest in yourself. Lots of companies will do this. I work for a University that offers 75% tuition reduction, but in addition to that they pretty much buy me anything I want when it comes to books, gadgets, seminars, professional conferences etc. Its a win-win situation
March 10th, 2009 at 7:25 am
BAD JD! You treated that Yahoo/AP article as if it was worth reading! The whole thing is about market-timing. You know better than to believe in such witchcraft.
(apologies to wiccans)
March 10th, 2009 at 7:29 am
@tinyhands
Heh. I hadn’t even considered that as a market-timing piece. I thought of it as a story about the broad status of the economy.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I remember hearing Brian Tracy on his old tapes talking about investing 3% of your income into yourself.
March 10th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Hey J.D., I enjoyed the “great lessons” article a lot.
Re: investing in yourself - I’d say it’s important to invest not only in health and education, but also in society. It’s very common for people, especially men, in midlife to allow their social circle to constrict so that it only includes their immediate families and their co-workers. I think it’s crucially important for people to remain active with a hobby that involves other people, whether it’s motorcyle cruising, rockhounding, or ballroom dancing.
Such hobbies or avocations are often intrinsically educational, and are excellent for networking, because they bring together people who wouldn’t otherwise be likely to meet.