Personal Finance Confessional #2

For my second personal finance confessional I must begin by confessing that I'm very bad at confessionals! When I wrote my first confessional on August sixth I had every intention of beginning a weekly personal finance confessional. Nineteen days later I am just now getting around to confessional number two! So item number one this time around is that I need to work to be a more consistent blogger and confessor.

Item number two in this finance confessional is that I have strayed from the straight and narrow path regarding my Roth IRA investing this month. Since January I have been able to sustain a consistent $300-$400 in Roth IRA contributions into my Sharebuilder (Buy stocks for $4 at Sharebuilder) account. With the end of summer rapidly approaching, and with no paycheck from the university until November 1, I have been unable to make any notable contribution to my IRA this month.

Actually, as I wrote that last sentence I decided to log into my Sharebuilder account and check my deposit total for August so far, and I have actually contributed $272.00 this month! I didn't contribute it all at once, though, which is part of the reason it didn't seem like much, I suppose. There is probably a significant lesson about investing to be learned there: if you make small and regular contributions to your retirement accounts, you will never miss the money and it will add up to a significant sum very quickly. My August deposits are a perfect example of this principle, as I had convinced myself that I had only contributed $100 or so this month. Needless to say I am pleasantly surprised at the real total, and now I feel like I can beat myself up a little less in this confessional!

The third item of business is the very bad habit I have picked up now that I am back working in a shopping mall: eating fast food for lunch. Carl's Jr. is one of my favorite places to eat, but I am convinced that Carl's Jr. could be the spawn of Satan with its seductively enticing burgers that cause me to stray from my ideal path. In my perfect world I would be disciplined enough to pack a lunch every day like my virtuous wife, but I am weak in the presence of Carl's Jr.'s Six Dollar Burger. I will not bore you, my precious readers, with a sermon on the ills of fast food for one's finances and one's waistline, but this is the most serious personal finance temptation I have faced this month. In fact, I just took a moment to run a quick total on the amount of money I have spent on fast food so far this month, and the total is $208.32. So while I am pleased that I contributed a decent amount to my Roth IRA this month, the pill in all that jam is that I spent (ahem... wasted) nearly as much on fast food. I may need to join my friend Bobby's Big Butt Weight Loss Challenge, starting a.s.a.p. It will be good for my fitness and for my retirement accounts.

So that is the scoop this go-around, my dear readers. Do not lose faith in me as a personal finance guru and mentor because of my many shortcomings. Like all true confessionals, may this one end in absolution of guilt as I rededicate myself to sound personal finance. $272 in Roth IRA contributions is still nothing to sneeze at, and I am in far better financial shape than I was just nine short months ago when my retirement savings were exactly zero dollars. Since then I have accumulated nearly $4000 in retirement investments, including my Roth IRA and my 403(b). I am keeping the faith through trial and tribulation; don't lose yours!

Jury Duty: The Great Equalizer

Jury Duty has always been one of my favorite experiences. It is easy to forget how privileged we are in this county as a free and democratic society, especially as we go about the business of day-to-day life; and jury duty is a reminder of the equality and protection that are valued so highly in our laws and Constitution. Regardless of the criminal charges brought against the accused in a court of law, the accused is entitled to certain rights of due process, which serve to protect him/her and to ensure equality under the law.

Today as I sat in the courtroom as the jury selection process began for my biennial jury service (actually a hardship selection process due to the unusual length of the upcoming trial), I was taken by the synergy of diversity and equality in the courtroom. In the courtroom there were people from all walks of life, all ethnicities, all professions, and all statuses. Each of the individuals being selected for the jury is viewed equally under the eyes of the law, which forms the fabric of our society. Each potential juror seeking to be excused from jury service for hardship pleaded his/her case before the judge who then granted or withheld the excuse of each juror as was fitting.

Two thoughts occurred to me as I observed this process (and having served on an actual jury previously). First, I was reminded of the openness of potential one has in life to guide his/her own path. Each of the potential jurors had a unique story to tell about why they could not serve, which was a reminder to me that in a country such as ours we have radical freedom to choose our own professions and destinies. This made my inner existentialist quite happy and was a reminder that one can always, literally, pick up and change professions or goals as one sees herself fit.

The second thought that occurred to me was that many of the prospective jurors seemed to take the responsibility of jury service rather too lightly. The defendant was present in the courtroom while the selection was underway, and the twelve jurors chosen will ultimately decide that man's future. This is a weighty responsibility that can only properly be taken up with the utmost gravitas. I heard many people whispering that they would automatically vote guilty if they were chosen to be on the jury. I cannot imagine a more un-American sentiment than this. To have this mindset is to forget that the jury is there to protect the rights of the accused to a fair trial (and that one is assumed innocent until proven guilty, in our society) just as much as to protect the average citizen from harm. We are indeed fortunate to live in a land that allows trial by a jury of one's peers rather than summary judgment from a monarchical power, to which any who have been falsely accused would attest.

It is this very same freedom that allows for the economic prosperity of this country to occur. Free enterprise, just as self-determination, is a necessary counterpart to the protected freedoms mentioned above. While I have written about free will elsewhere in my blog, it is worth reiterating that free will is the backbone of moral and economic responsibility. As free (and equal) agents, we are able to use our resources wisely or foolishly, but we must be prepared to face the consequences of the foolish use of those resources. While one is unlikely to encounter a financial jury (unless one handles resources so badly as to venture into the land of fraud, theft, etc.), the prosperity or poverty one faces as a consequence of sound finance management, or lack thereof, is weighty enough consequence. Simple and straightforward principles are perfectly adequate here: Don't live beyond your means; A penny saved is a penny earned; Let your money work for you; etc. And just as one is entitled to a jury by one's peers in criminal law, one is entitled to bankruptcy or prosperity as a result of the metaphorical jury by our free market economy. We all must live under the law and under the same economy, and we must use our freedom wisely.

Dividend Payday

I received my dividend distribution from my holdings of Advantage Energy Income Fund today. When I began investing in AAV, I purchased eight shares exactly through Sharebuilder.com, and since then I have increased that holding to 8.4873 shares of AAV as a result of monthly dividend reinvesting. This particular monthly payout netted me 0.0851 more shares at approximately $11.63/share. Advantage Energy Income Fund had quite a spike in share price a few weeks ago, which resulted in fewer partial shares being purchased via dividend reinvesting. Now that the share price is hovering a little lower, I am getting more shares for the same dividend rate each month. When combined with the compounding effect of dividend reinvesting, I should continue to see increased dividends and the resulting increased holdings of AAV on a monthly basis. For those of you who are regularly following my dividend reinvesting saga, below is the usual, freshly updated and ever-growing, list of dividend payouts I have received since becoming an investor in January 2007. You will notice that the AAV distribution is actually smaller this month than the previous month's distribution. The only thing I can figure is that the international tax on this Canadian investment has been raised, or perhaps that the exchange rate between the Canadian Dollar and the American Dollar has dropped in the past month. In any case, the smaller dividend payout still bought more partial shares this month due to Advantage Energy's lazy share price.


Roth IRA Dividends:

iShares Russell 2000 Index ETF (IWM):

03/29/07: ($0.64)
07/05/07: ($0.86)

S&P 500 Index "Spiders" ETF (SPY):

04/30/07: ($1.27)
07/31/07: ($1.62)

PowerShares High Yield Dividend Achievers ETF (PEY):

04/30/07: ($1.11)
05/31/07: ($1.38)
06/29/07: ($1.39)
07/31/07: ($1.82)

Money Market Fund:

02/21/07: ($0.47)
03/21/07: ($0.53)
04/23/07: ($0.64)
05/21/07: ($0.26)
07/23/07: ($0.36)


Taxable Account / Emergency Fund Dividends:

Advantage Energy Income Fund (AAV):

03/19/07: ($0.87)
04/18/07: ($0.91)
05/17/07: ($0.94)
06/19/07: ($0.99)
07/19/07: ($1.01)
08/17/07: ($0.99)

Money Market Fund:

02/21/07: ($0.35)
03/21/07: ($1.55)
04/23/07: ($3.25)
05/21/07: ($4.62)
06/21/07: ($2.68)

First Goal Reached: $2,500

I am happy to announce that my first investing goal has been reached. My Roth IRA portfolio is worth over $2,500. While I still have until April of next year to max out my Roth IRA contribution at $4,000 for the 2007 tax year, I had set $2,500 as the first goal for myself as a serious investor. So since January 2007 I have contributed between $300 and $400 regularly to my Roth IRA, not counting what I am contributing to my 403(b) through the university and what my wife contributes to her 401(k). If we continue investing at this rate, we will be quite well off financially when retirement rolls around. My next goal is, of course, to max out the Roth IRA, but I said to myself that I would consider myself a serious addition to the world of investing when I had accumulated over $2,500 in investments.

$2,500 Blog Competition

I don't usually go for this type of blatant self-promotion (especially from others!), but in this case I really could use the money:

"Over at Ashwin’s blog, you will find one crazy blog owner!! You can win $2500!! To enter just copy this text and paste it in your blog!! But hurry, this competition will not last long! So get posting!"

So if you are like me and can't resist the opportunity to win $2,500 for zero work, cruise over to Ashwin's blog and enter his blog contest. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Associated Content Performance Bonus

Today Associated Content finally updated their performance bonus page view statistics, after a month or so without an update. The good news is that I moved up another "Clout Level" to level six (out of ten, woot!) due to the large number of articles and page views that I have generated since becoming one of their content producers. Also because of this large number of page views (12,574 to date), I finally qualify for the performance bonus payment. Sometime during the next performance bonus cycle I will receive $18.86 in residuals from the various articles I have written. Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to read my various articles here at SeeMeGetRich.com and on Associated Content. $18.86 is nothing to write home about (although it seems to be enough to blog about!), but it is still money that is being generated automatically with no extra effort on my part. And, of course, that $18.86 is going directly into my Roth IRA just as soon as I receive the payment.

Investment Tuesday

My Roth IRA retirement account is handled by Sharebuilder.com. One of the quirky features of using Sharebuilder is the fact that they restrict your automatic investment purchases to Tuesdays. While this may seem like a negative to those of you who (foolishly) try to time to market to buy at the lowest possible price point, Sharebuilder's reasoning is that, from their point of view, placing all trading orders in one lump sum significantly reduces trading costs; savings can then be passed on to their clients. (Besides, one should not be concerned with trying to time the market when investing for the long-term.) While I have thought about switching my Roth IRA over to Zecco.com, due to Zecco's zero-fee trading platform, I have actually been rather pleased with the user-friendliness of Sharebuilder's site and its orientation towards beginning investors who wish to dollar-cost-average their investments.

So tomorrow is my investment Tuesday, and I will be purchasing $271 worth of iShares MSCI EAFE Index Fund (NYSE: EFA). $271 may seem like the very antithesis of a nice, round number, but often I will make random, extra contributions to my IRA to satisfy my urge to splurge without wasting my money on frivolous things. Up until a couple of months ago, I had been dividing my regular Roth IRA contributions equally between the four funds that make up my portfolio (EFA, IWM, PEY, and SPY). I recently began trying to purchase only one fund a month, in order to reduce trading costs. It has been a while since I purchased any EFA, since that fund has had the highest growth of my four funds, and I am trying to buy more of those investments that are lagging behind (buy low, sell high, remember?). But this month it is EFA's turn to be on the bottom and get its monthly "top off," so to speak.

Personal Finance Confessional #1

My friend and fellow blogger, Bobby, is the worship pastor at my church. Each week after our Sunday worship gathering, Bobby records a "video worship confessional" in which he recounts the worship portion of the service from his own perspective, including the high and the low points from the music portion of the gathering. While I do not have Bobby's prowess with the video camera or with video editing software, I am fascinated by his worship confessionals and their ability to reveal the inner workings and thoughts that contributed to the gathering. It occurs to me that SeeMeGetRich.com is itself a type of confessional about my struggles and triumphs with personal finance. So if Bobby will forgive me for adopting his confessional paradigm, I am beginning my own weekly personal finance confessional on this site, in which I will bare my soul about the money matters that have affected my finances throughout the previous week. Perhaps someday when I am feeling adventurous I can even give the video format a try! So without further ado, here is my first weekly personal finance confessional:


This week was a challenging one for me financially, filled with indulgences and decadences of every sort. To begin with I have eaten out more this past week than I have at any time in the past six months since becoming an investor. My explanation for this (although not an excuse) is the fact that I am again working at the local mall, at which a trip to Carl's Jr. for a fast food meal is just a stone's throw away. Within the past week I have eaten out seven times, totaling just under $100. The thought of wasting my hard earned money on fast food to this extent is painful when that money would be far more productive (and healthier on my waistline) if it were instead placed in my Roth IRA for safekeeping.

My wife and I also adopted a new pet rat from the pet store a few days ago, which consumed another $100 of my money for the week when counting the new rat cage and supplies. I have always considered pets to be a justified expense due to the general happiness and well-being they bring to my life, but the $100 is still painful. At least the majority of the money was spent on the new cage, which is just a one-time purchase. Bedding, nesting material, and food are all rather inexpensive, so I consider this to be a one-time purchase.

The largest expense of the week will be the deep-sea fishing trip I am taking early tomorrow morning on the Monterey Bay. I will probably end up spending $80 or so for the boat and equipment rental, which is not outrageous; but when combined with the other indulgences above, the $80 is a little hard to swallow. But I have always wanted to try deep-sea fishing, and I would hate to say at the end of my life that I never gave it a try when I had the opportunity, so I am plopping my money down and am looking forward to the experience. And hopefully I will have a generous portion of fresh Rock Cod to savor for dinner tomorrow night!

Other assorted expenses have included airfare to visit my wife's family in Florida in October, and twenty dollars for a much-needed haircut after church this afternoon. So all in all I had a mind-bogglingly terrible week for saving money. The good news, though, is that I am continuing to contribute regularly to my Roth IRA, which is exciting right now due to the recent market downturn. I am trying to pump as much money as I can into the account to take advantage of the lowest stock prices in the past six months. Then when the market goes back up (and it will), I will have purchased significantly more investment shares for the same amount of money! But after my fishing trip tomorrow I am resolving to get my personal finances back on track this upcoming week, and I promise to have better personal finance news for my next personal finance confessional next week.


So thanks, Bobby, for the confessional inspiration! By the way, if any of you readers out there would like to see Bobby's first-class video worship confessionals, check out his blog www.myworshiprevolution.com, or take a look at his "legal" (18th. LOL.) worship confessional below.

Star Trek and Money

Anyone who has known me for nearly any length of time will know that I am what qualifies as a gigantic Star Trek fan; whether it is the Original Series with Kirk and Spock, The Next Generation with Picard and company, or Voyager with Captain Janeway. With the upcoming release of the next Star Trek feature film, Star Trek XI (okay, in December 2008, but I'm already counting down), I thought I would devote a little blog space to the economics of Star Trek. Of course, Star Trek as a franchise is big money for Paramount Pictures, but I am here concerned with the internal economics of the fictional Star Trek Universe. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, used his fictional universe as a way of putting forward his own Utopian views about what an ideal human society would be like at some unspecified future date. But does Roddenberry's vision of the Star Trek Utopia make a plausible candidate for a desirable direction for our species to take?

While occasionally the Star Trek characters use "Federation credits" or "gold-pressed latinum" to make purchases, it has been explicitly stated in Star Trek (such as Picard's statement in Star Trek: First Contact) that money does not exist anymore in the 24th century, and that humans had advanced beyond the drive for material wealth and possessions. Aside from the practical implausibility of this ever coming to fruition, it is worth asking if this should even be the abstract ideal (something along the lines of the idealized society in Plato's Republic) for human society.

The prima facie appeal of Gene Roddenberry's vision here is undeniable. A cursory glance at the problems in the world due to greed, power, and materialism throws Roddenberry's non-economic Utopia into the realm of plausibility. If the drive for money and wealth were somehow eradicated from human society, goes the argument, then mankind would be free to pursue higher ends such as peace, exploration, knowledge, etc. The connection here is obvious, and I have personal experience with this connection: working on my doctoral dissertation while trying to make ends meet financially creates an intrinsic tension with my time and efforts, and I have struggled with this battle for some time now. My academic pursuits would undeniably be easier to follow were I somehow to be free of more pedestrian concerns about rent, food, quality of life, etc. That being said, however, I will argue that Roddenberry's view is over-hasty and throws out the financial baby with the proverbial bathwater.

For all the problems that money causes in the world, one can just as easily find examples of money being used as a tool for the cause of goodness. Charities, churches, and even academic institutions, all utilize their finances to bring about positive change in the world. Moreover, Roddenberry seems to disregard a basic fact about human nature, which is that mankind is a being that is able to find value in things (whether value in people, in morality, or in material possessions). I would argue that part of human life is to find and assign value(s) to the objects and entities we encounter throughout the course of our lives. Money is thus just a means of quantifying the value that we have already placed in the objects that makeup our world. The valuing comes first, the quantification later. On my view, then, doing away with money would just force this valuation to take other forms (e.g. Federation credits, gold-pressed latinum, etc.).

Fundamentally, though, I believe that Roddenberry has committed a "false-cause" fallacy in his vision of future human society. Roddenberry takes the view that money is the root (or, rather, one of the roots, since he also rejects religion in his Utopia) of the evil that one finds in interpersonal interaction. I maintain, however, that Roddenberry has hit upon a false cause here and that where money is concerned, it is the love of money that is the root of evil rather than money itself. Like all inanimate objects, money is just a tool that can be used for good or for evil. Money is therefore morally neutral and it is up to individual persons (or perhaps societies) to choose willingly to use money for morally good ends rather than for evil. But if it ends up that money gets used for evil, the money is not to blame; the people are!

So in conclusion, I find that the economics (or lack thereof) in the Star Trek universe to be desirable on the surface. But on closer inspection it becomes clear that Gene Roddenberry has incorrectly assumed that money is a force for evil and strife in the world, while in reality money is just an inanimate object like any other object with value to us. How we use that object is up to us a beings with free-will. Perhaps human nature and its tendency toward evil is the real culprit, so unless human nature is adjusted (although as a religious person I believe it is possible to transcend this tendency toward evil) money will be continue to be used for evil ends. One can hardly blame the money for this, though, since the money cannot control its own destiny; how money is used is strictly up to us.