13 January 2008 One Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

Its almost two weeks into the new year and I’m feeling great about 2008. I’m officially a college graduate and this is a new beginning. I’m not worried about all the talk about the economy, the war, the murders, etc. The news sells fear and thats what they are good at doing. I’m focusing on what I’m good at doing and what areas I need to improve. I made some changes to this site’s appearance and there will be more changes to come. I’m looking forward to writing more pillar articles for the site, then really focusing on promotion. After seven months of blogging I am pleased with the growth of the site even though we had a big setback with the server crashing a month ago right when traffic was exploding. This is just the beginning, I encourage you to check back for more content and great tools. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our RSS feed and get great articles on personal finance, investing, and entrepreneurship delivered to you for free.

There’ll be many exciting things happening on our site, but lets not forget the other great sites out there with excellent content. Here are the hot topics for the week.

Learning How To Let Go. I hate a cluttered environment. Studies have shown that it is actually bad for you. Steve gives some great arguments and suggestions on how to let go of your stuff. I love #4. Sooner or later it won’t be yours anyway, so why not de-clutter your life now.

Prosper: The Leader in Social Lending.  Tina gives a great example of how peer to peer lending works for both lenders and borrowers. Stories like these is why I decided to add social lending to my investments. I think the business model and lending model makes sense and it’ll work. I’ll do a writeup about my experience very soon.

Investing with Small Amounts: Stocks or Mutual Funds? Sun gives his answer and I would have to agree. Everyone has to start somewhere, so I would start investing by hitting up a discount broker and go for a mutual fund. The stock market is volatile now, but if your investment is for the long term (which it should be) there is no need to really stress over it.

Netflix vs. Blockbuster: Which to Choose? The lazy man loves to have his money work for him so he can relax and catch a great flick. He gives reasoning for why he chooses Netflix over blockbuster. I think whoever can deliver faster will eventually win this war. Blockbuster creamed Netflix by letting you drop off and rent at physical store locations rather than waiting in the mail. But Netflix came back with an offensive of their own by letting you watch streaming videos online. I’ve seen this and its actually very efficient. I think whoever can deliver the most hours of viewing efficiently will win this battle. My girlfriend has a Netflix account.

Robin Rogers - San Antonio Investment Realtor. Steve shares his experience with finding an investment realtor. Steve and I are both buying property in TX, but I’m looking more towards the Houston area since I am moving there later this year. I’ve found what I believe to be a good investment realtor and I rank my realtors based on similar criteria to Steve’s. Since San Antonio isn’t really far from Houston, and it was ranked as the best investment city, I wouldn’t mind giving Robin a call down the line.