CNNmoney.com has an interesting article on how to reduce your energy costs by buying a windmill. Very interesting concept. It costs about $6000 and it’ll save you around $500/year. [probably even more in California]. You also might qualify government subsidies. Check out the company’s website for more info.

There’s also another article on saving money on energy by buying off-peak when its cheaper and storing it. Don’t know how effective this is but its also an interesting article.

I’m cheap so I’ll probably hang out at my friends places and use their elecriticity instead! 😉
Got any wacky ideas of saving electricity? Let me know.

Went to a real estate meeting last night. The speaker was Ward Hannigan a local san diego investor who cleaned up the town during the last 2 RE recessions buying foreclosures. He thinks during the next downturn[which is going to hit in the next few years] he’s doing to make more money than he’s made totally during the last 24 in the foreclosure business.

He’s very much the contrarian investor. What is contrarian investing? It means you have the guts to go against the crowd [and popular sentiment] and do exactly the opposite. You sell when others are ecstatic and a you buy when others are fearful and have given up hope. Why does this work? Because people are usually wrong when they all put their heads together. A great book on the psychology of the common investor is Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds. It explains the feeding frenzies that have occured over the past few hundred years. [you get the weird feeling its describing the stock market craze and crash of 2000].

He says in a few years, when most people have given up on investing in Socal, it’ll be time to buy. You’ll need a lot of cash to pay for homes at auctions but you’ll need to buy them at 65-70% of the then FMV [Fair Market Value].

Here are some of his tips in no particular order.

• Stick to entry-level housing in core urban areas. Stay away from remote areas.
• Don’t buy condo’s, except in Downtown San Diego.
• Don’t buy office Buildings
• Buy on the 4th postponment of an auction[weeds out the less motivated investors]
• Get several cashiers checks in various amounts.
• Ask for the TSG when you win at an auction[Trustee’s Sale Guarantee].
• If you doing pre-foreclosure buying, postpone the foreclosure by filing chapter 13

As an exercise he said those of you that were really interested should go down to the local court to find out how to file Chapter 13. Infact, as a motivational tool, he promised lunch to anyone who could prove that they went down to the office today. So during my lunch break I headed downtown to find out how to file chapter 13! After spending 15 minutes getting into the courthouse[had to go through the scanner and remove my belt and shoes], I find out there’s a seperate Bankrupcy court. After spending another 15 minutes wandering around, I finally found it. No, I did NOT stop to ask for directions to bankrupcy court! Funnily enough, it was absolutely empty! Didn’t think warranted its own building [which was quite pretty]. Maybe filing bankrupcy a seasonal thing 😉

The clerk asked me if I wanted the forms for emergency chapter 13 filing. I was amazed at her prescience. My next thought was “wow, do I look like such a loser?”, but then she asked if I was part of a class. Aha! Several other people had shown up before I did. Anyway I said no I put on a face like I was hurt she was making fun of me! I found it it takes about 10 mins to file, once you filled up the couple of pages and it costs $274. “Thats it?” I asked incredulously?

So for a few pages of paperwork and a few hundred bucks I could get my creditors off my back for a while [& ruin my credit for the next decade]! Awesome! Don’t you just love this country! Of course I’m being facetitious. Chapter 13 is just a reorganization of debt. You have to pay back a lot of it over the next 3-5 years.

In my last post I mentioned that the Dow was up despite a bunch of negative news. As I expected it didn’t last and the Dow is down 200 point over 2 sessions. Historically May through September is a bad time for the markets. Someone did a study that if you invested only between October and April you’d make much more than the industry average in the long run.[sorry, I can’t recall the source].

Someone I know, Robert Campbell, author of Timing the Real Estate Market, said that if you invest on December 1st of every year and pull your money out on January 15th[45 days later], you would make a 7% return 80% of the time!

Anyway, I think the market is going to continue to do badly in the short term. I had previously mentioned RNE, IIF and IFN. Today they’re all down between 5-15%. I’m going to use this as a good opportunity to get in. [NOTE: DON’T BLINDLY FOLLOW MY ADVICE. DO YOUR OWN DUE DILIGENCE]

While the new format of the blog worked fine on my Windows 2000 machine under Firefox 0.9, it didn’t work well under Internet Exploder nor under WinXP and a different version of Firefox. I did spend several hours messing with the stylesheet but I now must admit temporary defeat and revert back to the old format.

Besides, I’d rather be blogging!

Gold today jumped up a few more bucks to $704. Two people asked me if it was still a good time to buy. The answer is no. Wait for a consolidation at these levels before venturing in.

Bernanke raises interest rates for the 16th time in row. He’s not saying if he’ll raise them again, but he sure ain’t lowering them!

Oil is still hovering at $72/barrel.

The Dollar slides against the Euro to its lowest point in 12 months.

Despite all this bad news, the Dow still rose 3 points. Thats pretty unusual. Lets see if it holds up tomorrow.

The Money Shaker Blog has finally gotten a face lift. Please let me know what you think of it and if any changes are needed.

Vonage has announced plans that its going public. Its had a steady growth in revenues but its still deeply in the red. While I think a lot of people will get rich off its stock, its not a value buy nor is it a long term hold.

There are a slew of companies that offer similar services at Vonage. Although they don’t have as big of a marketing budget and thus aren’t as popular, their services are comparable. [well somewhat comparable]. I recently tried out sunRocket’s service. After being billed erroneously for an 8hr phone call to Australia in the middle of the night on a weekday [which just doesn’t work for me, i go to sleep by midnight most fridays too] I decided I’d cancel. They wouldn’t pick up the phone nor would they reply to my emails about cancelling their service. I had to dispute the charge with my credit card company.

So whats the cheaper alternative to Vonage? Vonage currently charges $17/mo for 500 outgoing minutes. Unlimited incoming minutes are free. To replicate this service all you need is a Dlink VOIP router which costs the same as Vonage’s VOIP router. You’ll need to buy a telephone number which you can do at GizmoProject.com for around $35/year and some prepaid minutes. Calls within the US are 1 cent/minute. So you’re 500 minutes will cost you about $8/month as opposed to Vonages $17. Also using the GizmoProject softphone, you can make calls anywhere you can plugin your laptop and you can buy a service that rings multiple phone[both regular and soft] simultaneously. I have a Gizmo softphone at home and it works exceptionally well. Even for international calls the quality is great, something which I found lacking in sunRocket [and even SBC where I often had to shout].

I hope this proves my frugal nature to Lazy man et al! [I’m just teasing]. Like they say, “A penny saved, is a penny earned”.

In a news story today, WSJ reported that young people are buying old “grandpa” cars from the 70s till early 90s, like buicks and chevrolets. They’re tricking them out by putting 24 inch “donkey tires” and painting them bright colors like tangerine orange and lime green and putting expensive audio systems in them. Started by the success of TV shows like “Pimp My Ride”, this craze has even spawned a magazine called “Donk, Box & Bubble”.

Nothing to do with PF or investing, but interesting nonetheless!

Moomin Valley has an interesting post on the different types of financial bloggers. He theorizes on the two main types – those who are trying to save money, and those are trying to grow their money.

Quite an interesting concept. [He is an economics professor so his job is to theorize on these things anyway!]

The next logical question is what sort of reader are you?

Bargaineering.com’s hosting the 47th Carnival of Personal Finance. He’s created a pretty neat image map that looks like an amusement park. Thanks for mentioning my site!

The Wall Street Journal had an article that Buffet is buying foreign companies now. Berkshire recently bought Israeli car manufacturer Iscar and it looks like that just the beginning.

The continuing weakness of the dollar despite higher rates strengthened his view that Berkshire needed to invest in companies and securities overseas to protect itself from a possible sharp fall in the greenback.

Mr. Buffett blamed, as he has in the past, the growing current-account deficit in the U.S. and the country’s trade imbalances with other nations, such as China, which could cause a painful correction in the dollar and lead to “significantly” higher inflation. “The more you owe, the more it becomes attractive to devalue the currency” in which your debts are denominated, he said.

Buffet also thinks that speculators are now driving up the price of commodities and that “at midnight its all going to turn into pumpkins and mice”.