It’s time to learn how to invest. So, I opened an account at TradeKing.com. (4.95 per trade, limit or market, no minimums!) I searched and searched, and I think that this is the best platform for me. I have decided to put 20 percent of my savings “to work”. So, right now that is about 1500 bucks. I actually want try some “quick trades”, going in and out of a stock in hours or days. I have my “safe” money in my retirement and savings accounts, but I will kick myself forever if I don’t at least give buying and selling stocks a chance. As always, I’ll keep you updated.

My 3 “personal” rules:
Use limit orders
Buy stocks that I understand
Pay attention to the details

(I know a LOT about getting out of debt. That’s my “thing”. I know very, very little about investing. BUT! I am going to learn! Knowledge baby, knowledge.)

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I have found the following to be a good “technique” for putting money away during the month:

First, I create a (saving/extra debt payment) goal. For this month it was approx. 2300 dollars from income. Then, I deposit our paychecks into our local bank. Approx. 5000 dollars. So, I have 5K to work with throughout the month. I IMMEDIATELY send 1000 or so to ING, because I know that I will not “need” that money for expenses during the month. Then, I take out my envelope monies for the month, leaving a balance of say, 3000 in the checking account and I put 200 of that into my “wife’s” checking account. (She has a checking account with a small amount for pharmacy/grocery/kid stuff/gas/emergency stuff. We keep about 300 bucks in it.) After transferring the 200, I now have 2800 for bills and stuff. I want to put about 1300 of this (or more) into my ING account, but I don’t want to do it all at once. Why? Because I might need some of this money throughout the month for unexpected expenses. BUT, I don’t want to wait until the VERY end of the money to send the 1300. Why? Because I lose interest! (I know, I know, I could get an interest bearing checking account, but I like my local bank…) So, I send a little, along and along, guaranteeing that I have ENOUGH for the rest of the month, AND I make some interest on my transfers. Got it? (Imagine that the checking account is a glass full of water, and the saving account is an empty glass of water. I “pour” a bit of the cash from the checking account, every day or two, into the savings account. This way, I still have convenient access to my money, and I can chose NOT to transfer any amount of money at anytime. I like my system…)

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Whew. I am exhausted. I have updated every phase of No Credit Needed today. Tons of stuff to talk about:

1. Brand new episode of the No Credit Needed Podcast is up. Short and sweet. I changed the encoding a bit to make the file download a little smaller in size. Hope it doesn’t hurt the quality too much.

2. Tons and tons and tons of updates over at the No Credit Needed Network.

3. The electricity/energy saving challenge for the month of April is ON! They read my meter yesterday, so I have begun my energy saving tasks.
A. Turn off water heater from 6:30 AM until 5:00 PM
B. Turn down refrigerator thermostat
C. Reduce use of dryer/dish-washer/heat/ac/etc.
D. Completely power-down televisions and tivos when not in use (actually remove plug
from power source)
E. Turn Computer/Monitor OFF at night/ Turn monitor OFF during the day when not in use.

I’m sure I’ll have more to come in the next few days concerning saving energy.

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Once in a great blue moon, I like to highlight some of the blogs that I am reading:

Ask Uncle Bill Clear, informative, great, great post. Just go read it!

BankDeals I LOVE this simple, well-written, focused blog.

Beyond Broke Live from the UK

Boston Gal’s Open Wallet Just because we have the same template…AND I love the blog!

Crazy Money Hey, they sent me that book, too!

Defying Debt Wanna own a Post Office? You can.

Financial Train Wreck Going back to school… NOOOOOOOOOOOO

I’ll have a few more later on today.

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So, this gets rather complicated. Before you read the rest of this post, please click here to familiarize yourself with the initial eBay Experiment data.

Good. As you can see, my EXPECTED minimum profit was going to be: 21.99

However, things have changed. You see, Amazon has a “price drop” guarantee that very few people know about. I remembered reading about this over at BluePrint. So, the price for the item that I purchased FELL by 15.24 PER ITEM. So, here is the new and updated chart, with my new EXPECTED minimum profit of: 67.71

If you have purchased an item from Amazon in the last 30 days, and the price dropped, I would highly recommend following the advice at BluePrint’s site. The refund form is VERY easy to fill out, and I had an answer back from Amazon in LESS than 2 hours. Awesome, baby! 3 days until the auctions end.

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