I just finished reading the 2001 edition (cutting-edge, aren’t I?) of David & Tom Gardner’s The Motley Fool: You Have More Than You Think. I read it in three days, which is unusual for me - while I don’t typically gravitate toward page-turners, I couldn’t put this book down. I’ve had this book for years, but only now read it (though I did start my personal journey of becoming financially literate at Fool.com a few months back).

The gist of the book is that you should be investing in the stock market. More specifically, you should:

• Buy stock in a few good companies, and plan to hold your stock for decades, not days
• Avoid paying fees to brokers whenever possible (I use E*Trade for the lowest fees). Realize that stockbrokers make money when you buy and sell, not when your assets grow; resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell.
• Choose index funds over mutual funds, and you’ll nearly always come out ahead in the long term

This advice comes in the context of a few obvious bits of investment advice, e.g. paying off credit card debt before investing much in the stock market, and leaving your money untouched so the magic of compound interest can grow your fortune over time. Everyone, the Gardners assert, should be investing in the stock market (even if it’s only a dollar a day), because over the past century it’s offered an average 11% annual return (doubling your money every seven years).

It’s a readable if dated book, with glowing references to AOL and other 1990s icons, but it left me looking for more basic financial advice, so I’m next turning to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace Revisited.

I’ve been using PearBudget for about two months now, so I finally have accurate information on where my money is going. It’s not pretty, and not fun, but an essential first step in making better decisions.

One of the best features of PearBudget is that it allows you to track “irregular” expenses - those expenses that don’t come up on a monthly basis, but nonetheless need to appear in your monthly budget (e.g. setting aside money for car repairs).

PearBudget handles irregular expenses as follows:

• You estimate how much you’ll spend for the year, and PearBudget calculates how much you’ll need to set aside each month
• Your balance for each irregular category is carried forward from the previous month
• Therefore, if you have a surplus or deficit in an irregular category, it’ll be represented accurately over the long term, rather than resetting every month

As I start to collect data about my irregular expenses, I’m realizing that I’ve been fooling myself about certain categories, thinking “I’ll just spend less next month to make up for that splurge” month after month. Clearly, you can’t do that again and again and still live within your means.

For example, major electronics purchases are a weakness of mine. I frequently become convinced that I must have a digital SLR camera, a new computer, an iPhone, a scanner, a widget or gadget of some kind. And I always have a reason, a compelling justification for purchasing said item RIGHT NOW. Worst of all, I tell myself it won’t happen again for a long time, so it won’t break the bank. This has not, in fact, been the case over the past few years; major electronics purchases have been an inordinate proportion of my budget - but since I didn’t start keeping track until last month, I don’t know exactly how much money I’ve blown on gadgets. I do know I’ve purchased two $400+ cell phones in the last two years, if that’s any indication.

If tracking your expenditures is the first step to effective budgeting, becoming aware of issues and patterns like this is the second. Up next, of course, is changing spending behavior to address these problems.

It’s been several months since I last mentioned politics on this blog, but now that Barack Obama is the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, I think it’s time to highlight some of the things I continue to appreciate about his campaign.

First is his refusal to take money from lobbyists and political action committees, a policy that the Democratic National Committee just adopted across the board:

“The DNC and the Obama Campaign are unified and working together to elect Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. Our presumptive nominee has pledged not to take donations from Washington lobbyists and from today going forward the DNC makes that pledge as well,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. “Senator Obama has promised to change the way things are done in Washington and this step is a sure sign of his commitment. The American people’s priorities will set the agenda in an Obama Administration, not the special interests.” link

Second is the number of people who’ve contributed to Obama’s campaign. It’s ordinary people - people like you and me, who donate reasonable amounts of money to make a small difference. I’ve made several donations to match first-time donors’:

Here’s what Sue T. in Los Angeles, CA had to say:

Barack is a force. I’m over 60 and didn’t think we would ever see a president as mean spirited as Nixon ever again — but then there was George W. Barack will bring a new way for us to think about the White House — and a new way for the White House to think about us. I can’t wait.

This is a direct message to me from another Obama supporter. Megan G. in San Francisco also made a donation that was matched by my last donation. It’s a simple feature to implement in a donation website, but a great way to connect people and help them feel like they’re a part of the campaign.

The graphic above read 14,000 earlier today, and now it’s over 20,000 (and may be higher still by the time you see it - it’s updated regularly).

Third, and somewhat tangentially, I like the way the Obama campaign has marketed itself. Style and design matter, and BarackObama.com is one of the best websites I’ve used (not to mention the best campaign website by far).

There are also tons of policy reasons I’m enthusiastic about the Obama campaign, as well as historic reasons. I’m looking forward to the upcoming debates between Obama and McCain.

Today I finally downloaded release candidate 2 of Firefox 3, which should be ready for the dot-oh release fairly soon.

The new version is absolutely gorgeous, like Camino, but is a little less cartoonish and truer to the Firefox I know and love. Buttons, checkboxes, and form fields look the way they’re supposed to on a Mac, and the toolbars and tab bar look great. There’s even a souped-up autocomplete when you start to type a URL in the address bar.

I’ve heard that FF3rc2 is not completely stable, though, so I decided to rename FF2 to Firefox2.app and install FF3rc2 without removing FF2. This leaves me the option of switching back easily whenever I want, but it didn’t migrate my bookmarks.

Here’s what I did to move my bookmarks:

1. Open Finder and navigate to:

   

   

   (of course, the username and xxxxxx.default will vary, but the latter was the only folder in Profiles)

2. Copy the newest backup file to your desktop or some other easy-to-browse-to location
3. In Firefox 3, go to Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks and hit the star button, and select Import HTML:

   

4. Select the HTML file you copied in step 2

That’s it - bookmarks in both places. Note that this is a one-time import, not a sync, and is probably not necessary (though I wouldn’t know) if you overwrite FF2 with FF3.

I should also mention that the bookmarking system in Firefox 3 is quite different, but in this post I’ll limit myself to the import issue.

By Friday (or Monday if I’ve put things off), my desk is often overflowing with paper. Each slip or stack represents some type of task (often ill-defined on the item itself) that I need to complete before I can file or recycle the paper.

David Allen, in Getting Things Done, recommends putting everything in your inbox, then processing each item to decide what needs to be done with it. If it’ll take less than two minutes, do it immediately. If not, create a reminder to do it later, and move on.

The challenge, when your desk gets full, is that often there’s something you need to see soon - before you completely finish dealing with your paper. In order to remind yourself of what’s in your inbox, it may be helpful to flip through everything once, without following the two-minute rule - that is, even if you see something you could do quickly, but you don’t need to do it now, skip it. This will allow you to see what’s waiting for you and pull out any right-now items.

Don’t do this more than once a day, though, or your ability to process your inbox effectively will be diminished. Block out some time and go through the paper until you’re done with all of it. It may help to ignore email for a while so you can focus on the paper.