There is a new post up at MoneyAhoy.com about investing in Market Index Funds and how it can be so beneficial to invest in these types of vehicles.

Market index funds can be Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) or Mutual Funds.  They are designed to hold a basket of stocks in direct proportion to the index they track.  The most popular global index that is tracked which is largely representative of the US market in the Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&P500).  Two of the most popular market index funds that track the S&P500 are the SPY and the VFINX.

The  SPY is an ETF managed by SPDR (State Street Global Advisors), and it is one of the most actively traded ETFs in the world.  The most current net expense ratio is only 0.0945%.  This compares to the average actively managed mutual fund with an expense ratio of 1.29%!!

The VFINX is a mutual fund managed by Vanguard, and it is one of the most popular mutual fund index funds.  The most current expense ratio for this on is 0.17%.  The Vanguard website declares that this is 85% lower than most other funds with similar holdings.

There are several other benefits of investing in Market Index funds besides just the savings you will see from the lower expense ratios.  The post at MoneyAhoy.com details several of these, so I will just touch on them here to wet your appetite:

• Cost – I touched on this above, so I won’t go into much detail here other than to point out that you will probably save on average roughtly 1.1% over actively managed mutual funds.
• Risk – Buying a diversified basket of stocks versus putting all your eggs in one basket is the most prudent way to go unless you are looking to buy lottery tickets!  Believe me, I have made the mistake of only owning a handful of stocks and one bad pick can spoil the whole portfolio.
• Performance – Only about 20% of actively managed mutual funds beat the market index like the S&P500 each year.  If you try to consistently find that 20% that will win each year over a 10-year period, it will be almost impossible for you to beat it.  The much more likely scenario is that you will waste a lot of your time and come out behind.
• Simplicity – Each month or quarter you can simply fire up your investment software and purchase SPY or VFINX in about 3 minutes versus spending countless hours trying to pick the best stock you think will outperform.

So, there you have it.  There are a lot more details and investing ideas over at MoneyAhoy.com.  If you’d like more information about investing in Market Index Funds, then check out the post directly!

Their is a new article up about money saving at www.MoneyAhoy.com entitled Advertising Strategies to Brainwash You!

This article discusses how companies that buy advertising for TV, radio, billboards, internet banners, junk mail, spam e-mail, etc. use tricks and strategies to brainwash you into buying their product or service.

There are 6 type of influence that Robert Cialdini refers to in his book Influence.  These are (taken from wikipedia.org):

Continue reading →

I put a new post up on www.MoneyAhoy.com on how you can negotiate for the cheapest cable, phone, and internet service rates.  It is a three-part series documented with Youtube videos and several helpful tips!

I was paying $65 a month and was eventually able to get Comcast to lower the price all the way down to $35 a month.  This gave me a savings of $360 per year for about 30 minutes of phone time.  This equates to $675 saved per hour of my time!!!

Part-1 of the post goes over talking with 2 reps.  The first one I got was pretty good and gave me $15 off almost immediately for being a valued customer (more than 1-year as a customer).  I was working with him to get $20 off to hit my goal when I accidentally hung up on him while checking the call length 🙁  I then called back and got Paco.  He was really tough and basically stonewalled me.  I couldn’t really get anywhere when negotiating with him.  I should have started out by asking about the new customer promotions, but I didn’t.  This carried over into Part-2.

Continue reading →