Don't Quit Your Day Job…

Visit Darwin’s Finance for the 212th Edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance! Our article, “Are California IOUs Constitutional?” is a featured article for this week. Keeping with the emotions of the 4th of July, the theme is countries which have declared independence.

Check out this week’s Money Hacks carnival, posted at the Personal Finance Playbook!. Our article, “The Failure of Dollar Cost Averaging” is hosted this week.

Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) is touted by some financial planners as the solution to all of investing’s problems. By continuing to invest money at a regular interval, you buy more shares when prices are low and more shares when prices are high. Additionally, dollar cost averaging fits the general schedule of how people normally get paid – every two weeks you get your paycheck, and you also automatically invest in your 401(k), for example.

That’s great… for predictable streams of income. This article will *not* try to convince you to stop your normal recurring investments. However, dollar cost averaging meets its match when introduced to a windfall. When you have extra funds, you shouldn’t tiptoe into the market, you should dive right in with a lump sum investment. Don’t believe me? Let me convince you…

What can be said about this book that hasn’t already been said? Even if you disagree with Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, her book Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, predicted a great number of the extraordinary economic events that have occurred in recent months.

This article will share with you a few quotes from the book which hopefully will inspire thought – either for or against – her philosophies. Enjoy.

Yesterday, California started to issue IOUs (technically, registered warrants) to creditors since it is ensnared in a major budget impasse. California has taken this step before, most notably in 1992, but they also issued IOUs during the Great Depression.

Since the warrants are unavoidable at this point, I’ll shift my focus to another issue- constitutionality. Is what California is doing legal under the terms of our Constitution? And what is a ‘bill of credit’?

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control is a newly-enacted federal law that gives the FDA regulatory power over the tobacco industry, among other provisions that attempt to dissuade misleading advertisement on young and old smokers alike. The law was signed into effect on June 22, 2009.

There were two major advertising provisions contained in the law. The first was that over 50% of the front and back of every cigarette pack must be warnings with a giant ‘WARNING’ in capital letters . The second, and maybe more important, is the banning of the use of words ‘light’, ‘mild’ or ‘low’.

I’ve written plenty about gasoline lately, but only about gas taxes. Let’s shift gears a bit… Do you think gas prices will increase? If gas prices increase, is there a way for you to hedge against that increase so it doesn’t affect you? Of course!