My Favorite Articles of the Week

I’ve discovered that I’m much more efficient with my blogging on my new laptop. I’m not tethered to the outlet anymore, which has allowed me to work at my kitchen table. This has allowed me to get ahead of the game. I will have all of my articles for this blog written by the end of tonight (I’m writing this on a Tuesday!!!). I plan on using my time the rest of the week to work on improving this blog and setting up my fantasy sports blog. Sitting down at a desk type environment is much more productive compared to the couch, I highly recommend it. Now for the links.

Links

Jim at Bargaineering is also trying to be more productive by busting his email addiction>. I really liked this post because I easily identify with wasting time. At work I frequently check my email, as well as various other websites like espn and slickdeals. I’m currently reading Timothy Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Workweek” (highly recommended), which offers up a wonderful solution for busting time consuming habits. He recommends setting specific times for checking your email, espn or slickdeals. For example, check your email at noon and after dinner. You ‘ll be surprised at how much you don’t miss out on and how much time you save.

Jonathan at My Money Blog looks 5 years into the past when evaluating long-term financial goals. It’s very difficult to set appropriate long-term financial goals. It’s even more difficult to strive for long-term financial goals. I think it’s great to have a long-term financial goal (mine is to be financially independent, although is ASAP long-term?). It is definitely wise to have numerous short-term goals to use as building  blocks. You never know where you are going to be five years from now, let alone 20 or 30 years into the future. As a frame of reference, think about what you were doing 5 years ago. Could you have predicted any of your present? Probably not, unless you were going to predict the Cubs still wouldn’t have won a World Series.

Over at Lazy Man and Money, 3 investing lessons were learned the hard way. The stock market is providing way more than three lessons to investors and it definitely is not in a soft way. I’m fortunate to not be heavily invested in the stock market, yet. I am taking this opportunity to learn a lesson from this bear market, and I recommend all of you do as well.

Patrick at Cash Money Life just lifted his face (almost as cool as taking your face off like Nick Cage and Mr. Travolta) with a new blog theme. Congrats, it looks great.

Passive Family Income tackles recession in America and the fact that some are turning to day trading to make up for lost retirement savings. This is absolutely one of the worst ideas possible. Day trading jacks up your portfolio turnover, which leads to excessive trading costs and taxes using the short-term tax rate, not the favorable long-term tax rate. Not to mention it involves extreme timing of the market. Most of these people turning to day trading probably don’t have the necessary expertise or investing tools to make enough money to offset the costs. Just a bad idea all around.

Update: I have a guest post running today at Smart Passive Income. This post focuses on using numerous income streams to generate a raging river of income.

Carnivals

I participated in one carnival this week. Free Money Finance hosted this week’s edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. I submitted my post about Self-Employed Income Plans, which seems to be quite popular, which is good because I will be blogging much more about my self-employed income.

Random Thought

Is anybody else excited about the prospect of Jack Bauer taking on at least a dozen heavily armed Sangalan soldiers all by himself? With no weapons (besides his fists of fury). I just can’t understand why he didn’t take the Presidential locater and end the conflict right away. I suppose the show wouldn’t be 24 hours then. I can’t wait until next week.