Who Is That Mars Man Anyway?

I had not heard of the Twilight book series before a couple days ago when Lori mentioned that some character was on a lot of “Pieces of Flair” on Facebook. Anyway, I looked up the character and found out they were from Twilight which apparently is having a movie made or something. Since then, I have seen Facebook news feed items about people adding Twilight to their favorite books and I have read about a Harry Potter-esque midnight “release party” for the new book coming out in August. It is crazy how something explodes like that.

It’s Lori and I’s anniversary today. Wow, I can’t hardly believe it has been two years already. I am so excited that we are going to go out to Melting Pot later. I got her some stainless steel pots and pans because I knew she had been wanting them because some recipes prefer those over non-stick, and also you can use metal and wooden utensils. She got me a ton of nice new clothes. I like them so much.

Am I the only one that is tired of hearing people complain about them? Sure it would be nice if Washington did something that would ease the price a bit, and I do miss when filling up was $1.19 a gallon (I think that is the lowest price I ever personally paid for). Nonetheless, there is absolutely nothing I can do about them. So you can either drive less, drive in a more fuel efficient manner, or just get over it. If you need your car like you say, then you pay whatever it takes. It might stretch the budget, but there is realistically hardly anything you can do to change it, and complaining is definitely not being productive in any sort of manner.

As I have mentioned before, my 401k company match comes in the form of SCANA stock. This had recently come to take up about 30% of my portfolio so I believed it was time to rebalance. I sold my shares the other day at $39.85 or so, and then they closed yesterday just over $41. The difference was only about $30 on the amount of money I was managing, but it sucks to lose that much (nearly a 3% gain if I am doing the math right. Oh well!

I just had the strangest craving for this “salad” that I have had a few times in the past that I remembered specifically containing apples and mayonnaise. I did a little quick googling and the closest thing I found to it is Waldorf Salad, but I think what I had was a little different, maybe a variation on Waldorf Salad, maybe something else. Anyway, it is just odd because this isn’t a dish I ever recall ever asking to consume, only having eaten it when others made it. I have no idea why I suddenly want it.

You know, even though it is sometimes a hassle, insurance can be great. I found out yesterday that our dental insurance is going to cover $535.20 of Lori’s wisdom tooth extraction. We had already settled this bill so this means that we will be getting a nice chunk of change back which will help us on our various financial goals. The funniest part of all is that we knocked out $650 worth of deductibles with only $454.80 in payments because of the dual coverage. Also, I did some calculations, and if I am correct, we only paid $43.40 more for going with Dr. Wietecha in spite of the fact that he was out-of-network. The fact that we did not have to reschedule with another oral surgeon is worth that much at least, not to mention that he did a good job.

Furthermore, I got a bill for a doctor visit that Lori had which really showed me the value of insurance. The insurance company received $1072.00 in charges from the doctor, discounted away $613.96 (which goes to show how doctors overcharge!), and after that they paid 100% of the balance (except for our co-pay). I feel really sorry if there is anyone out there who would be stuck with the full balance of this kind of a visit.

By and by, I really do want to do a “life update” sort of post, but I have been swamped with my thesis winding down. I am then going on vacation next week, so it may be early June before I get anything substantial posted.

I don’t want to get into any lengthy debate on this issue, but I know a lot of people are up in arms thinking that Ethanol production is causing the price of food to rise. While that may be partially true, you do have to also consider the fact that a big part of the cost of food rising comes from the fact that oil has reached record levels, and, though you may not always think about it, much of the food in the grocery store comes from far away and expends an enormous amount of food getting to you.

Thus, while I remain cautious on whether ethanol is an appropriate solution to our petroleum dependency, I think that whenever someone wants to complain about it, they should also remember the high prices being imposed by OPEC.

Also, you should consider buying locally grown food. It should not be as price inflated by gas costs of either kind.

Whenever you sign up for an online bank account, you are nearly always expected to link it up with another account. I assume that they figure the person will logically choose a brick-and-morter bank for this purpose. To protect users, most sites make two small deposits of between 1 and 99 cents to the account and force you to verify these deposits before you may use this account as a funding source. I assume this is meant to protect from accidents and account fraud. Additionally, many sites allow you to link up to 5 or 6 accounts at once. Anyway, if we assume that these sites have no way of remembering deleted accounts (I am not sure if this is the case), you could set up a large amount of checking and savings accounts among the various high yield savings accounts and take a few minutes out of every day (or couple of days if the deposits are slower) to mutually link these accounts to each other. Over time, you should average a dollar profit for each transaction. If you have accounts at 6 financial institutions that all allow adding 5 linked accounts, then you could make an average of $30 re-linking accounts. Even if you could only do this once a week, that still leads to $1560 a year.

The only major problem that I see with taking advantage of this is that if you did it too regularly, you might be noticed and have your account closed. I think that realisitically if you wanted to employ a strategy of making money through this medium, you would need to have a large number of accounts that you applied this strategy to sporadically. This way, you would not go back to the same account too many times and if caught you could use the excuse that you had more than the allotted number of linked accounts and you kept deleting and changing accounts in order to make transactions between more accounts. With so many accounts open though, you do run an increased risk of identity theft.

If anyone wants to try this, let me know how it goes.

I thought I would present my current 401k asset allocation for your enjoyment. I know that from a traditional asset allocation point of view, I am way too heavy into my company stock, but it is cost prohibitive to constantly rebalance the portfolio when my matching contributions come in the form of company stock (not to mention that the stock is currently fairing better than my other holdings). I plan on rebalancing my portfolio to reduce the holdings either twice a year in the short term. Eventually, the company contributions will only be a small part of my overall portfolio and I may rebalance more infrequently, likely whenever SCANA common stock passes being 10% of my assets. Of course, this schedule is subject to modifications based upon market performance of the stock and the other equities I hold.

My asset allocation as of today is 74.9% domestic equities, 18.1% foreign equities, and 10% domestic bonds.

Domestic Equities - 74.9%
50.2% - Vanguard Total Stock Market Index
24.7% - SCANA

Foreign Equities - 18.1%
7.4% - Vanguard European Stock Index Fund
5.3% - Vanguard Pacific Stock Index Fund
3.2% - Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund
2.2% - Euro Pacific Growth Fund

By country this is roughly
10.2% - Europe
5.3% - Pacific Basin
2.6% - Emerging Markets

Domestic Bonds - 7.0%
7.0% Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund

For what its worth, excluding SCANA common stock, the asset allocation is 66.7% Domestic Equities, 24.0% International Equities, and 9.3% domestic bonds.

I previously reviewed the Braeburn apple. Read this first if you want more information about why I review apple cultivars.

I recently bought some Red Delicious apples because they were on sale. They were really quite bland. I mean, they were not that juicy and they did not have a strong flavor. Maybe I got a bad batch, but this goes toward confirming everything that I have read about Red Delicious apples being inferior. I must admit that they are beautiful though, being the iconic apple and whatnot.

But really, thinking back, I cannot remember the last time I had a Red Delcious apple and thought “wow, this is excellent, I need to go out and buy more apples soon”, it is more like “oh, cool, there are apples around, I will eat them before they go bad”.