Plays Well With Others

The Bottom Line…

One of the first things I do in the morning is check out the news headlines. I’m not big on watching news reports on TV and would rather catch the headlines and then pick and choose which stories I’m really interested in. I can read them in a few minutes and be done with it. Quick and easy.

Along those lines, I have my homepage set up for Google’s personalized mypage, set up with various news sources and a stock ticker. I can search, check news from tech to finance to real estate and also see the weather and my own stocks all in one easy to spot place.

There are good and bad things though, about having a stock ticker, because you can watch the stock go up and down all day long. Last week, I saw a 5% dip in one of my stocks which is pretty sizeable, but not worthy of too much concern since I’m pretty diversified and the other stocks saw jumps that day, pretty much equalling out any losses. They’ve all been up for the past week, so I’m feeling good about it.

I mentioned it before, but I’m using Sharebuilder.com, which is addicting as hell. You can have it auto-withdrawal some money from your checking account every month, like $50 and then you can auto-purchase stock every month using that money. I’m set up to buy three different stocks with about $75 a month from my business account, divided as $25 per stock. Then you watch your stocks to see if they go up or down and watch your money either go up or down with it. It’s fun and not very risky if you keep the amount low. And most people have a little extra cash they could use for investing and it’s fun to keep track of. The key is to just leave it alone and not freak out over every bump and sell it all. Most people buy stocks and leave them alone for decades on end, without touching them.

In other news, I recently found out that the city I live in has signed an agreement with an internet provider to blanket the city with free wireless internet. This is huge because we currently only have one internet service provider—Comcast. They charge about $60/mo. We used to live a few blocks away and were able to get DSL but it seems like it doens’t reach the couple of blocks to our new place. They only charged $25/mo. Anyhow, the wireless is free is you don’t mind advertisements and then $20/mo. to get rid of the advertisements. Nice. And since we’re a block from the downtown areas, the lagoon and the City Hall, we feel pretty good that we’ll be in an area with fairly strong reception.

Cheaper internet and rising stock prices—all things that definitely help the bottom line.

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