The answer is simple: virtually every single person has the resources with which to begin investing. It may seem impossible for some to believe, but it’s true.

If you make purchasing decisions in your home, you have all you need to begin investing. Choose some generic items instead of the brands you usually buy and start your investing with the dollars you save.

If you ever spend money on entertainment, you have all you need to begin investing. Instead of renting a DVD at the Redbox, stop by your library, check out a movie for free, and put aside that dollar you save. There are countless other little ways to shave just a little bit here and there without changing your lifestyle.

If you use electricity, you have all you need to begin investing. Air seal your home or put in a programmable thermostat and you’ll see a significant drop in your energy bill, with which you can invest.

It all starts with the littlest of of choices.

Here are five simple steps anyone can take with that savings

1. Participate in your employer’s retirement plan. More than 90% of the employers in the United States offer a retirement plan. Many of those plans offer matching funds, in which the employer will make contributions to the plan if the employee does as well. Plus, this money goes in before taxes, meaning for every dollar you put in, it reduces your paycheck by substantially less than a dollar – and it also reduces your income tax at the end of the year. If you have a retirement plan at work and are choosing not to even consider using it, you’re choosing poverty.

2. Start an automatic savings plan. If you’ve found a way to cut your spending by even a quarter a day, you have enough to start. Set up an automatic savings plan and transfer whatever you’ve saved to a savings account each week or each month. Even $10 a month – about $0.30 a day – is a great way to start, as it will add up to $121 or so over the course of a year and continue to earn interest beyond that.

3. “Snowflake” into a savings account. If you discover useful one-time ways to save or to earn a little bit more money, don’t spend it frivolously on something you want in the short term. Instead, take that little amount – the $10 you found in the parking lot, the $7 you saved buyinig toilet paper in bulk – and put it right into your savings account. Even better, just start a jar for it, throw that snowflake right into the jar, then take it down to the bank when the jar is full.

4. Save windfalls instead of spending them. What about when something bigger and unexpected comes along? A relative dies, leaving you an unexpected sum. You get a settlement. You win a large cash raffle. You win at the casino (of course, you’d be far better off just not going to the casino, but that’s another story). Sure, feel free to celebrate with a little of that windfall, but instead of blowing through the whole thing like a snowblower through powder, put most of it into your savings.

5. As your savings grows, buy a CD – and then grow from there. Once you hit your bank’s minimums for purchasing a certificate of deposit, do so. This will earn you quite a bit more interest than you were earning in your savings account, but it will “lock up” your money for a while. That’s a good thing – since you’re not intending to spend it anyway, locking it up is just fine.

Congratulations, you’re an investor. When that CD matures and you couple it with your additional savings, you may have enough to start branching into other investments. Hold onto that money – when opportunity comes your way, you’ll have exactly what you need to jump on board.

A very specific example Let’s say Margaret chooses to start saving just $1 a day for the future. Once a month, she automatically transfers $30 from her checking account to her savings account – she doesn’t even have to think about doing it.

After a year, she has $360 in savings and it’s earned a dollar or two in interest. After three years, she’ll have around $1,100. She can then buy a $1,000 CD – a long-term one that earns a couple percent more than her savings account does.

Three years later, Margaret is still just saving a dollar a day. She can buy another CD and has about $200 left over in that account.

Three years after that, all of her CDs mature. She suddenly has about $4,000 with which to begin looking into more aggressive investments if she chooses. Maybe she buys a Vanguard index fund – they have almost no fees and can easily be purchased via their website. Or maybe she feels safer slowly building her cash reserves.

All this takes is a dollar a day.

One final point Now, I’d like you to imagine a couple more things.

Imagine if Margaret is forty when she begins this plan. By the time she reaches retirement age, after saving a dollar a day, she’ll likely have an extra $30,000 for retirement. Not bad for just a dollar a day that she’ll not miss.

Imagine if Margaret is twenty when she begins this plan. By the time she reaches fifty-five, she’ll have around $50,000 in savings. That’s seed money for a new business – a perfect way to begin her second act in life.

Imagine if Margaret is a newborn when she begins this plan (with a parent or a grandparent’s help). By the time she’s fifty, she’ll likely have (well) over $100,000 built up in that account. That’s an amount that can change a life.

These numbers assume that you never snowflake and that you never sock away an unexpected windfall, either. Imagine the possibilities.

Why the big rebound? To put it simply, the greater world finally realized that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. The economy didn’t collapse. Instead, we just find ourselves in the middle of – and perhaps moving towards the later stages of – a rather strong recession.

Naturally, as the economy begins to slowly come out of a recession, the stock market goes gangbusters. Companies are beginning to reawaken and slowly increase production, a radically different picture than the massive cost cutting of the past year. Unemployment is somewhat stable – it might go up a little more, but it’s no longer on the rocket ship that it once was.

In short, we’re getting through this and we see sunlight at the end of the tunnel.

What does this mean for you and me, as small individual investors? Does this mean we should convert all of our investments into stocks and ride the rocket ship?

To put it simply, no, it doesn’t.

Hedging your long-term investments on what you think the stock market (or any investment market) is going to do in the short term is called market timing, and it’s never a good idea.

My philosophy is simple, and it’s one that was taught to me by many, many wise investment writers and investment books: unless you’re a day trader or spend a significant amount of time daily studying the stock market, you’re a long term investor, and long term investors have nothing to gain from trying to time the market.

Simply put, the vagaries and complexities and huge sums dealt with on the stock market each and every day, with so much insider information floating around and individuals playing all kinds of manipulative gains, plus the total uncertainty of day-to-day world events (if you recall, for example, 9/11 was wholly unexpected), makes it a very unsafe place for the typical person trying to save for retirement or for another long term goal. Instead, their reward is to simply look at the stock market as a long term place to put their money for a long term investment with a payoff date more than ten years down the road.

It’s all about your goals and your risk tolerance. It has nothing to do with what’s going on today, tomorrow, or next week.

Don’t let yourself be swayed by huge positive returns in the short term – or huge negative returns in the short term, either. Just stay the course with what you’re doing. If you find that the stress of such swings makes you nervous, redirect your future contributions to something with lower risk, like bonds.

Otherwise, just let things ride. Tomorrow might bring a huge unexpected event that we can’t see coming – or that some CEO is keeping under wraps for now. Given time, the stock market will correct itself from that, but over the short term, it’s basically little more than gambling unless you have the time and resources to devote yourself to truly careful study – or you’re investing with a small sliver of your portfolio that’s there solely to play around with.

In the long term, though, it’s a different story. It causes weight gain and other health problems. It can cause a negative body image and make people feel worse about themselves. Those effects cause an overall negative emotional sense, so they turn to the things that comfort them.

Many things in modern life follow that same structure: they’re nice in the short term, but incredibly painful in the long term. Credit card debt – you get what you want in the short term, but you wind up paying a ton of debt over the long term. Diapers – we use the convenient disposables for now, but later we lament filling up landfills with things that will take many, many years to biodegrade. A home mortgage – you get to move into a home, but you make huge interest payments for many years.

Again and again, humans choose to value the short term over the long term. We do it with countless daily actions each day, from the food we eat to the activities we choose to fill our time with. Our focus is on the now, not on the five years from now.

This is natural, though. Throughout the course of human history, humans have spent most of their time living a true hand-to-mouth existence. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors constantly benefitted by keeping their eyes on the immediate prize – the food in their stomach today and this winter, nothing else. Agriculture took many, many millennia to take off, and it’s easy to see why – you have to see some real success at agriculture to see it beating the benefits of picking a bunch of wild berries.

Today, though, we live in a different world. Food will be available tomorrow, but many of us still behave as though it might not be. There are thousands of apartments and rentals in most areas, but we buy a home because it fits our needs better – but our biggest “need” is simply a false sense of stability.

I do this myself all the time.

My focus is always on the short term with The Simple Dollar. I obsess mostly over the posts for the next week or so, without often worrying about anything beyond that. On the occasions when I do focus on the long term (like writing books, writing and preparing downloadables, working on projects with other bloggers, and so on), I usually find that over a longer period, I’m glad I did it.

I often try to put off meals that take a long time to prepare because, in the short term, I don’t want to make that time investment. Over the long haul, though, the great meals I enjoy and remember are often the ones I spend a long time on – the pasta made from scratch, the coq au vin cooked slowly and carefully, and so on.

Some days, I do not want to go exercise at all. It seems like a short term gain to just relax and kick back. I could read a book, after all, instead of going out there, getting out of breath, getting all sweaty, and having my legs feel like lead. If I don’t do it regularly, though, my daily life goes down in quality. I have less energy. I have less motivation to do … well, anything. I gain weight and my body image goes downhill, as does my appearance to others.

Sometimes I’m tempted to go the easy route when with my kids. Why don’t we just play in the backyard instead of loading up and going to a state park? It’s rainy – let’s just watch a movie instead of getting out all of the art supplies. In five years, though, what will have built a stronger bond with my kids? Time spent doing something adventurous and creative with their father, or time spent sitting on the couch or playing on the backyard slide?

In each case, the simple choice in the short term is far from the most enjoyable choice in the long term. However, the pain in the long term from the “easy” choice is far, far worse than the short term disadvantage.

Here’s an interesting exercise to highlight how much the phenomenon impacts your life. Spend a day thinking about what this activity will be worth to you in five years. If you eat that junk food, will the impact on you be positive or negative five years down the road? What about if you eat spinach instead? What will be the impact on you if you buy that DVD five years down the road? What if you put that cash towards your debt instead?

You make the little choices every single day to build your future. The better your choices, the better your life will be.

So, today, eat a little broccoli and save a few pennies. Over the long term, big dividends will be paid out.

Until recently, he had been socking his money away in an ordinary savings account. He bought a few certificates of deposit along the way to increase his savings rate, but he was (and still is) pretty risk-averse. He had no interest in putting his money at risk.

Several months ago, he shocked me by announcing he had purchased twenty acres of undeveloped land within driving distance of Des Moines, a pretty serious investment. Given how risk-averse John was with his money, the purchase really surprised me – he never struck me as a real estate developer.

Recently, he invited my family down to the land to camp for the weekend – he had wanted to “clean it up” some before we checked it out.

We were really impressed.

It turns out that John spends many of his free evenings down on this patch of land, clearing away brush, building walking trails in the wooded area, and building a small camping area. He built a picnic table there and a fire ring and made nice piles out of the brush he had cut, perfect for small campfires.

The majority of the land is a large, fairly flat prairie, with a small creek on one edge of the land and woodlands covering perhaps a third of the land. As we hiked all over the land (with our kids in tow), John kept pointing out all of the things he had done to improve things. He had cut back poison vines here, cleared brush there, made a trail here, collected berries there, and so on.

It was obvious he was thoroughly enjoying the land.

I asked him about his long-term plans with it. He has a “ten year plan” for the land that involves starting with a large shed in which to store equipment, followed by everything he would need to put on the land for it to be wholly self-sustaining: a wind turbine or two, geothermal heating, a well, a large garden, and so on. He intends on paying for each piece with cash. Eventually, he intends to build a cabin of some sort, then a larger home after that, building as much of it himself as he can.

Even more notable, he intends to pay for every step along the way with cash.

It’s obviously going to be a good investment. A nice, self-sustainable home within driving distance of Des Moines and plenty of fairly cultivated woodlands all around will have some serious value in ten or fifteen years. If John chooses to live there forever, he’s got a great situation around himself. If he chooses to start the whole process again because he enjoys the work in his spare time, he can sell the whole thing and get started with a nice bankroll.

The real value, though, is that John is really enjoying the investment. Being outside and working on the land like this is his hobby. The cash he put into the land might return him a nice financial profit someday – or it might not. But it’s returning him a very large personal happiness return right now.

To me, that’s a great investment. I don’t care about whether he gets a 1% return or a 10% return on his money from this. What matters is that he’s enjoying that investment. It’s bringing joy into his life in a way that a chunk of money in the stock market could never do.

When Sarah and I drove away from there, we both couldn’t help but think of our dreams of owning a home in the country. While I don’t have the passion for building that John does, I certainly have a lot of passion for the natural beauty of living in an area like that, where the only houses in view are on the horizon.

The return you get from an investment isn’t always represented in dollars and cents. Sometimes an investment can return a lot more than that.

There were several big reasons that finally made me transition completely. What I found, though, is that most of those reasons actually directly helped me manage my personal finances, believe it or not. It turned out that my money was one of the biggest reasons to finally make that transition.

Here are nine ways I use Google Calendar to make my personal finances that much easier. Many of these can be done using paper calendars, but in most cases, GCal makes it easier to do them.

1. Keep track of bill due dates
This is perhaps the most obvious use of using a calendar for personal finance. When you know a bill’s due date, add it to your calendar, then pay the bill when you see it’s coming close to its due date. So, for example, our mortgage payment is due on the 28th of each month, so on my calendar, on the 28th of each month, there’s a note that our mortgage payment is due. It helps me keep track of our payments.

How can I do this? It’s simple. Log onto Google Calendar. First, I recommend creating a new calendar specifically for bill due dates if you haven’t already – this makes it easy to highlight them. Then, click on the day the bill is due, create a new event, and add the appropriate information – the amount and the type of bill, at the very least. If this bill recurs on a regular basis, make the bill a repeating event. You might also want to add an event reminder so you’re emailed a few days in advance of the bill due date.

Free from Broke offers a nice visual guide to adding a bill due date to your calendar.

2. Plan ahead for gift-giving occasions
My family has always been really into gift-giving and it’s considered a serious faux pas to forget someone’s birthday. In order to make sure I don’t forget a parent or a niece or a nephew, I schedule all of those important days right into Google Calendar.

How can I do this? I use almost exactly the same technique as for the bill due dates. I have an “Important Personal Days” calendar and I add birthdays, anniversaries, and the like to that calendar, scheduling them to recur every year. I also have two email reminders for each one – one about twelve days in advance, and another about five days in advance.

3. Pencil in key dates for sales
Let’s say I’m shopping around for a washing machine, and I’m looking for the best deal I can get. I discover that the local appliance store is having a sale on washing machines next month and given that their prices are already decent, I want to take a look at their numbers. But I might forget the sale! Not any more – I just pencil in the dates of the sale in the calendar, reminding me to check out the sale during that time frame.

This works for any sale that you come across. But, as with any sale, it’s important to distinguish between buying something because it’s on sale (bad) and buying something you already need and taking advantage of a sale to do it (good).

How can I do this? Again, this is just a simple scheduling of an event, except that I set the event as a multi-day one, with the start date and the end date matching those of the sale. Since this isn’t too regular, I have a “Miscellaneous” calendar where I put such events.

4. Keep track of milestones for big goals
As I’ve mentioned a few times on here, I have a handful of pretty big goals: finishing my second book (here’s my first one), running a 5K, and saving for a van. For each of these goals, I have some milestones along the way. I try to make my best attempt at a 5K each week, for one, and I have a word count goal on the first draft of my book each week, too. So I schedule these milestones. I just create an event each Friday saying something like “Book word count target: 30,000.” On Sundays, I have a “Walk/run your best 5K” penciled in.

How can I do this? Just pencil in your milestones whenever they occur. I have a “Goals” calendar that I put these under. Why so many calendars? It allows me to make groups of things appear and disappear at will when I’m looking at the calendar, which makes it very easy for me to keep track of what’s going on.

Dal, Chilean style, with chickpea curry, which I discussed in this earlier article.

5. Schedule meal plans intelligently
Remember my post about making multiple casseroles? As I mentioned there, it’s usually worthwhile to eat those casseroles within two months or so. So, in that example, I made four casseroles on a Thursday afternoon. We ate one that Thursday night, then I actually scheduled the casserole again for three weeks, six weeks, and nine weeks later. Then, when we sat down to plan for the week, my calendar would show me that we already have a meal in place for one night that week, meaning we can plan for fewer meals and save money at the grocery store.

If you do these in multiples, it gets really neat. Let’s say you cook six pounds of chicken breasts on a Tuesday in a slow cooker and freeze four and a half pounds of them. You’ll want to use these within a month or so, so I’ll mark down the following Tuesday, the Tuesday after that, and the Tuesday after that that we have 1 1/2 pounds of cooked chicken that need to be used. This keeps us from “wasting” food in the freezer. You can do the same thing with any frozen item you buy in bulk – for example, we often buy beef in bulk from a local butcher because of the quality and low prices, so in order to avoid freezer burn, I’ll pencil in when we should use the meat. Again, having this information right there drastically reduces our grocery bill and fits in perfectly with planning ahead for meals, which is itself a huge money saver.

How can I do this? I use a “dinner” calendar to manage these things. I just create recurring events for both of the cases above, and when we plan meals once a week, I create events with what we plan for meals those days. I usually label any ingredients we need to use by saying “Ingredient: ” right in the name of the event. That doesn’t mean that we’ll use the ingredient on that exact day, but it works as a reminder when I sit down to exactly plan meals that we have, say, chicken breasts to use that week already in hand. I schedule a meal each night and include the recipes in it – we even usually pencil in a “leftovers” night about every third or fourth night. This really works well.

6. Plan ahead for scheduled maintenance
Home maintenance saves you money, period. Taking a bit of time on a regular basis to do things like change furnace filters, check fire alarms, check vents for clogging, and so on can make an enormous difference in the life of your appliances, the appearance of your home, and the energy efficiency of your home.

I speak from experience here. When we first moved into our home, we didn’t realize that our dryer occasionally ejected a very small amount of lint into the ventilation, which led directly outside the house. After several months of use, our dryer seemed to not work very well. We had to run it two or three times to dry a reasonably-sized load. We puzzled over this and considered calling a repairman, but my two year old son actually figured it out. He came walking over to me with some lint in his hand one day. I asked him where he found it and he walked me straight to the vent. A few finger sweeps later and the dryer suddenly ran as good as new.

The problem is remembering the numerous little home and auto maintenance tasks you need to take care of. The solution? A home maintenance calendar, which tells you when you need to change filters and when you need to do a walkthrough to check on things – and, yes, when you should check vents. I made a big list of home and auto maintenance tasks – picking out the ones you use and scheduling them can save you some serious change over time.

How can I do this? Again, with a “maintenance” calendar. These are almost all recurring events on different schedules – some every month, some every three months, some every six months, some every so many weeks (so that I don’t have days LOADED with tons of such tasks). If I see some maintenance tasks for that day, I just do them and then I know that things are being maintained.

7. Take control of your portfolio planning
I often encourage people to just put their retirement savings in a “target retirement” fund and just forget about it, but many people like to have more control than that. They want to balance things themselves. Perhaps they want more risk than those plans give, or maybe they want less risk. They might also want low risk investments in their retirement accounts but very high risk investments in their taxable accounts.

Either way, rebalancing those investments regularly is key. On a regular basis, it’s important to sit down and think about whether or not your investment allotments match up with what you really want to be doing. You might change your contributions significantly – or you might even actually move your investments around.

It’s important to do this regularly, and that’s what a recurring event is very useful for. I “rebalance” every three months or so, mostly by just altering my contributions. I’m fine with using a “target retirement” fund, but I actually enjoy digging in and tinkering with things myself.

How can I do this? If you’re involved enough in your investing to rebalance it regularly, just set up a recurring event with a reminder of what you want to be doing, as a note. So, you might have a “Rebalance my Roth IRA” event, with a note that says “I want to have 10% in this fund, 20% in this fund, 30% in this fund, and 40% in this fund.” I actually keep mine on my “maintenance” calendar.

8. Set up seasonal reminders
Different times of the year bring different things we should think about with our personal finances. Charles Schwab has a very useful article listing many of these seasonal concerns, some of which may apply perfectly to you.

Some things we all might want to do: get a copy of our credit report every four months from the FTC at AnnualCreditReport.com (you get one from each of the three agencies each year for free, so just get one from one agency in January, another from another agency in May, then again in September), start budgeting for the holidays in the spring or summer, plan seasonal charitable giving or volunteer work, and so on.

How can I do this? I put these in my “miscellaneous” calendar, but many of these are recurring. For example, I remind myself a few times during the summer to look for Habitat for Humanity dates, and I also prod myself regularly to put aside money for and shop ahead for Christmas. I also snag my credit report like clockwork and I also remind myself to occasionally touch base with my parents about their financial needs (a will or a master information document or anything else like that).

9. Remind yourself of the things that really matter
If you’re putting forth this effort into saving money, you ought to be doing it for a great reason. For me, my children are my big motivation – I want to make a truly great life for them. Of course, a great life means that I spend a lot of quality time with them, so I plan ahead for that. Aside from the “evening block” that’s devoted every day to family time, I often pencil in other events. Some of them are known – soccer practice and the like – but others are surprises, like whisking my kids away for a long afternoon at the Science Center of Iowa or going to story time at the library.

Make sure you’re taking time out for the things that actually matter in your life. It’s easy to see the big reasons before we get started, but often when we’re involved with projects and get so drawn in, it’s sometimes hard to remember to take time for the reasons why we’re doing this.

How can I do this? I have a calendar called “Family” where I schedule things like this. When I look at the week ahead and see a trip to the library or a trip to the Science Center or something like that, I feel like my week is more … complete.

An effective calendaring system has almost unlimited uses. Just remember that it’s a tool – the calendar doesn’t have meaning, your life does.

I was flooded with responses.

After spending quite a bit of time sifting through them, here are the fifty best pieces of advice that came my way (out of well over a hundred – I actually used a spreadsheet to help me figure out the best ones to include). All of these are stellar money tips – and all of them come in with ten words or less. Enjoy.

writealvaro: Don’t invest in what you don’t understand.
mmmeg: I only need one word! ASK!
The_Weakonomist: index emergency fund to unemployment. 9% = 9 months.
MichaelBRubin: Spend more time, less money.
fiscalgeek: The secret to money management is learning to be content.
pearbudget: Know what really matters. Don’t spend money on other stuff.
creditgoddess: Don’t borrow more than you can repay.
dgstinner: A fool and his money are soon parted
jacobmlee: Be mindful of how you spend money.
JoeTaxpayerBlog: Don’t walk away from 401(k) match, regardless of debt situation.
EdenJaeger: Live below your means and save all you can.
tonyblacknyc: Better to sell a little early than a little late.
Kplavcan13: Pay yourself first, you can’t give yourself a bill.
dweliver: Be content with what’s yours and you’ll always have plenty.
centsiblelife: Spend less than you earn. Earn more.
MoneyEnergy: Don’t save at 2% when you’ve got debt at 10%.
thefinancialqb: If you try to get rich quickly, you will go broke fast.
ObliviousInvest: Diversify. Minimize costs. Stay the course.
Matt_SF: Borrowing money for a depreciating asset is a fool’s errand.
benburleson: If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it.
mapgirlsfc: Save regularly and spend less than you earn.
jj_observations: Learn to love left-overs!
tusharm: Don’t spend money that you don’t have.
danielckoontz: Never reach for yield.
randypeterman: “Where will you & your stuff be in 100 years?”
Cat8040: Don’t take on debt.
KasyAllen: Don’t be afraid to ask for the savings!
nhldigest: Best money advice “Don’t Spend More Than You Earn”.
Green_Panda: My advice: Change one money habit at a time.
MoneyEnergy: Don’t count all your chickens before they’ve hatched.
fcn: Save and invest for the long term.
MyLifeROI: If it depreciates, don’t pay interest on it!
jessw61: Save/invest as much as you can.
Lisa_S_47: working hard doesn’t mean you deserve anything you can’t afford.
mtswartz: I’ll do it in two: Spend Less!
GlennLucas: Prevent your government from bankrupting your nation.
myfindependence: Be thrifty but don’t forget to enjoy yourself
spendingsmart: You can’t outearn dumb spending.
randallkirsch: A penny saved is more than a penny earned.
Grumpicus: Use credit cards, NOT debit cards.
flexo: The only one who cares about your money is you.
ceetastic: Before purchasing, I ask myself, “Can you justify the expense?”
moneyhighway: Money comes and goes the memories stay
robertsm85: If you don’t have the money then don’t spend it.
roryboy: if you need to use plastic, you can’t afford it!
msimonkey: Keeping up with the Jones’s is plain stupid.
maverickstruth: Know what comes in, and what goes out.
crazy_eddy: Let your assets buy your toys.
sfordinarygirl: Buy generics/private label because it’s way cheaper
jasonbob7: One word: leftovers!

Now, how about you? What’s the best money advice you can give in ten words or less? Leave yours in the comments!

That strategy pretty much matches the stock market. In fact, if you choose to just invest in the Vanguard 500, it almost exactly matches the ups and downs of the S&P 500 stock index.

Let’s look at the other side of the coin. Let’s say you’re following normal stock picking advice. You have a portfolio of 20 individual stocks (so that no piece of your portfolio is more than 5% of your total investment – diversification, after all). You devote an hour a week to studying each stock in detail, so you know what’s going on with that company. You also devote five hours a week to finding new, worthwhile companies to invest in, potentially replacing the slots in your portfolio.

You’re able to invest $10,000 a year – and we’re not worried about brokerage fees at all. What’s your earnings per hour doing all that research?

Let’s say all that work manages to beat the Vanguard 500 by 1% per year. Historically, VFINX has returned 9.56% per year since its inception (remember, that number includes dividends and stock price increases and decreases, and it does include 2008), so we’ll use that number as an annual return baseline.

Over a ten year period, VFINX would turn your $10,000 a year into a sum total of $170,968.66. Meanwhile, that portfolio that beats the S&P 500 by 1% would turn $10,000 a year into a sum total of $181,005.77. Your extra effort of 25 hours a week for ten years has earned you $10,037.11 during that period – an hourly wage of $0.77. Ouch.

“Come on!” you say. “Stocks are a long term investment!” So let’s look at the thirty year mark. Over a thirty year period, VFINX would turn your $10,000 a year into a sum total of $1,061,590.42. Similarly, your 1% better investment portfolio, with 25 hours a week over ten years invested in it, will turn that annual $10,000 into $1,347,885.59. Your extra effort of 25 hours a week for thirty years has earned you $286,295.18 – an hourly wage of $7.34. Congratulations, your investing expertise has earned you minimum wage.

“Come on!” you say. “I can do better than 1% over the S&P 500 every year for thirty years!” (Of course, if you actually believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.) So let’s make it 2% – you beat the S&P 500 by 2% every year for thirty years. Your extra effort for 25 hours a week for thirty years earns you an hourly wage of $16.60.

If you have the intellectual ability to do enough rigorous analysis to beat the market by 2% year in and year out, you can most certainly be earning more than $16.60 an hour with your time.

But what if you can invest more than $10,000 a year? If you’re in that group, where you’re able to invest significantly more than $10,000 a year in whatever you want and you’re sure you can beat the market consistently over the long haul, by all means, choose the route that’s right for you. However, I argue the statement above still holds – with those kinds of resources and intellectual acumen, you likely have better ways to earn money.

Here’s the take-home message: individual stock investing, done with adequate research, is a lot of work. Unless you have a very large amount to invest, the extra work is simply not worth it in terms of the extra income per hour.

Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t dabble in individual stock investing. I see nothing wrong with taking a sliver of your investments and playing the market, so to speak. However, recognize that such investments are largely a gamble unless you do adequate research. And, if you do adequate research, you have to blow away the overall market to make it worth your time.

My conclusion is simple. If you’re an individual investor without a ton of money to invest, it’s simply not worth your time to chase individual stocks. The time that’s required to adequately study individual stocks and build a truly diverse portfolio will make the gains small enough per hour of your work that you might as well do something else with your time, like build your skill set for your career, improve your health, or start your own side business.

Instead, just invest in a very broad index fund and ride the market at a low price with little time investment of your own. Better yet, do it with a balanced portfolio – don’t put it all into stocks, so that you can ride through the down markets with less worry and smaller losses.

Snowflaking is a spinoff of the Snowball approach to debt reduction popularized by Dave Ramsey. With the Debt Snowball method, you figure out what amount you can pay to debt every month, and then you keep paying that amount, even as your debts shrink and your minimums get smaller. To implement it, in a nutshell, make a list of all your debts, order them from either smallest to largest or highest interest to lowest interest (that is a debate in itself), and you focus all extra money above the minimum payments on a single debt (either the smallest total or the highest interest, I use interest order). As you eliminate debts, you apply the payment you were making to that debt to the next debt in line until the snowballing effect of decreasing minimums and increasing amounts applied to particular debts eliminates all the debts on your list.

Well, what are snowballs made of? Snowflakes! I have a set amount I pay to debt without fail every month that is above my minimum payment due (about $800). On top of that, I also try to collect up little bits of money wherever I can and I apply those as well to my top priority debt as immediately as possible. I take surveys online, I sell possessions on craigslist and ebay, I have yard sales, and any money I get from these endeavors goes directly to my debt. I also keep a very strict accounting of all the money that comes in every month and what I spend and everything left over at the end of the month not earmarked for future expenses also goes directly to debt. These are my snowflakes. I have averaged over $200 extra going to pay down my credit card debt every month due to these snowflaking efforts.

Many small snowflakes make a snowball, and no amount is too small for me to snowflake. I used to pay my credit card directly every time I collected a snowflake through their online interface, but now that I have moved my credit card debt to another card with a 0% interest offer, I collect the snowflakes and pay them once per week (I am limited to the number of payments I can make to this card a month). If you are able to and your debt is not at 0% interest, I highly recommend the “pay snowflakes immediately” method. The faster your balance is reduced, the less interest you will accrue.

Snowflaking is, quite simply, a great way to get aggressive with your debts. It gives you a little extra push towards achieving your goals. Even better, you can also “snowflake” towards any savings goals you might have.

Don’t know how to get started? Here are 15 ways you can get snowflaking going in your own life. These are low-impact ways – far from starting a side business – to earn a few bucks without devoting countless hours to a major project, things that sync very well with what you already do or can be picked up whenever you feel like it.

Have a yard sale. Go through your house, identify the items you don’t use much, and sell them. Put them out for sale in your yard over a weekend (with reasonable prices) and put that money straight towards your debts or other goals.

Keep your aluminum cans separate. In Iowa (and in many other states), there is a nickel “deposit” that one pays for each aluminum can (or bottle) purchased. Keep these cans and bottles separate from other trash, then occasionally return all of them for $10 or so. It helps the environment and gives you a bit of snowflaking cash.

House-sit. If someone you know goes on vacation, offer to house-sit for them, look after their pets, and so forth. It’s pretty easy work and can earn you some quick cash to knock down some debts.

Walk pets. If you already walk your own pet in the morning, it’s not much of a stretch to stop by another house or two, pick up their pet, and walk that pet as well – for a fee, of course. Put that fee straight towards your financial goals.

Blow snow. Got a snowblower? You’ll be blowing the snow from your own lawn anyway, so why not set up an arrangement where you’ll blow the snow from your neighbors’ driveways and walks for $10 or $20. Then, take that cash and put it towards your goals.

Eat a “free” meal. Freeze your “utility” leftovers, then make a meal out of them once in a while – mix your leftover rice, vegetables, and chicken pieces to make a “free” meal. That’s worth $5, easy, so just snowflake $5 when you do it.

Take surveys. It’s a great way to make a few bucks at your computer while watching a TV show or a movie. It’s not a great money maker, but it’s low-intensity and can be done whenever it fits your schedule.

Mow lawns. Got neighbors who can’t mow very often? Mow their lawn whenever you mow theirs for a few dollars. You’ve already got the mower out, right?

Write. You don’t have to start a blog and post regularly (though there’s success to be found there, too). Instead, just write articles and submit them to services like Associated Content or make “lenses” at Squidoo. It’s a great way to burn an hour or two on a lazy evening and earn a few bucks in the process.

Do simple tasks. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk will pay you a few cents for a mindless task that just takes a few seconds. One of my friends does this on her laptop during commercial breaks when she’s watching a television show and makes enough to cover basic cable.

Babysit. If you already have kids at home, put out your shingle as a babysitter. Most evenings, you’re already at home, so you’ll be getting paid just to mind another little one around the house. I know several people who do this.

Deliver groceries. If you know of any elderly folks or shut-ins who have difficulty getting out to buy groceries, give them a ring whenever you shop and offer to pick up what they need. They’ll often pay you several dollars extra for the service (and even if they don’t, it’s a great way to help someone in need).

Make crafts. Many people enjoy some sort of craft as a hobby. Create projects that reflect the best of your work, then sell them on sites like etsy. Anything from knitting to woodworking to scrapbooking to jewelry making can make you a few dollars in your spare time.

Be a “search guide.” If you’re just browsing the ‘net, why not help others find what they’re looking for online and make a few bucks? Cha Cha does just that – people send text messages to the service with questions, they pop up on your computer, you figure out the answer, send it back, and earn a bit to throw towards your debts.

Give charitably. Give what you can to charities – goods and other donations. Then, when you get the receipts for tax deductions, figure up how much you “get back” on your taxes and contribute that to your debts.

Good luck!

The Black Swan and Your Emergency Fund
The basic premise of The Black Swan seems like common sense: life is full of unexpected events. Big ones (like, say, 9/11), medium sized ones (like, say, a career shift), and small ones (like, say, your daughter wetting her pants just before you’re about to leave on an errand).

The Black Swan argues that our minds use a lot of tricks to hide these so-called “black swans” (his term for largely unpredictable and rare events) from us. We need to see the future as at least somewhat predictable, or else we wouldn’t bother making many plans at all. So, when we reflect on our past, it seems much more orderly than it actually was. Also, when we think about the future, we imagine something much more orderly than what will happen.

This idea makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. I know that quite often, when I think about the past, it does seem like an orderly progression of things. However, when I look at old diary entries and old videos, I see that there were actually a lot of “black swans” floating around. I didn’t see The Simple Dollar’s success coming at all, for one. When I went to college, I didn’t see myself working for a slightly eccentric German fellow who would basically set up my first career for me and also taught me how to pack effectively for business travel – he was a black swan.

Given that, I think there are a lot of things one can do in their own life that will prepare oneself for the arrivals of black swans of all magnitude.

Learn a wide variety of skills. I don’t just mean transferable skills, either. Know how to make things. Know how to build things. These skills will come in handy over and over again, often in unexpected ways.

Live frugally. I believe that’s one of the underlying messages here – frugality is a great economic and personal advantage. Knowing how to always maximize one’s resources makes one much more able to survive great changes in life – and also gives the person the ability to build up resources (as mentioned below).

Minimize your future costs. If you can use your money now to invest in things that will reduce your costs in the future, do it. The fewer resources required in the future to maintain your way of life means that fewer “black swans” can disrupt you.

Have a large, stable emergency fund. Having a large amount of cash reserves makes it possible for you to ride right through any small and medium-sized “black swans.” Your car unexpectedly dies? Not a problem. A career opportunity comes up? You can jump at it. You lose your job? Not the end of the world.

Have a good “opportunity” fund, too. Sometimes the unexpected comes along and it requires you to have resources. For example, there’s a large chunk of land near our house for sale. If it suddenly makes a nice drop in price, I’ll jump on it. If I happen to see the owner sometime soon, I may negotiate. It’s been up for sale for quite a while, so something nice may happen soon – not quite a black swan, but a good example. A real “black swan” might be that a neighbor is in a pinch and puts a sign on his car that says “$5,000 or best offer” and you can walk over there with $3,000 in cash, snipe it, then resell it for $5,000 with some footwork.

In short, keep some resources at hand, make yourself more useful, and minimize what you’ll need in the future.

The Black Swan and Investing
One particularly interesting point in The Black Swan comes when Taleb briefly discusses investing. His suggested portfolio for taking advantage of black swans is very unusual, yet it makes some sense.

He advocates putting 85-90% of your investment money into something extremely stable, like treasury notes. The other 10-15%, invest it in the riskiest things you can find – things where a black swan might make it go crazy.

So, let’s translate that into dollars. You have $10,000 to invest. You put $8,500 of it into treasury notes, which return 2% annually. You put the other $1,500 into Bangladeshi startups (for example).

At the end of the year, even if you lose all of the Bangladeshi money, you still have $8,670 – your total loss is only 13.3%. On the other hand, let’s say that your Bangladeshi startup goes bonkers and you get a 900% return on that investment, turning $1,500 into $15,000. You now have $23,670 – a 136.7% return.

Basically, Taleb’s argument is that, as I mentioned above, there are many more black swans out there than we initially believe there are, so one should take them for a ride without too much exposure to risk.

My feeling is this – if you have enough risk tolerance in your investments to put them into stocks, there’s some logic in using Taleb’s investment ideas. It puts a floor on the worst case scenario and gives a lot of upside.

Much of the rest of The Black Swan suffers from the same condition that befalls Taleb’s other books – lots of good ideas, but also lots of ego and self-congratulation. It’s thought provoking, but at times you want to go wash your hands.

The second I picked up Oblivious Investing by Mike Piper, I was immediately reminded of Michael Mihalik’s excellent Debt Is Slavery.

The two books have much in common. They’re written by people who aren’t personal finance gurus – instead, they just bring a lot of very specific passion about a very specific topic to the table. The books are short and very tight, drilling right in on their points. Their ideas are realistic and sensible – and the concepts are repeatedly backed up by both life experience and with the more lofty and scholarly writings of others.

While Mihalik drilled in on the dangers of debt, Piper’s focus is simple: investing can and should be simple and it shouldn’t require all your focus. Worrying about market fluctuations is bad. Picking stocks is a nerve-wracking gamble. Moving your money around all the time requires too much attention. Instead, Piper argues that we should be largely oblivious to our investments – and the idea is backed up with a lot of sound principles.

Piper’s book has two interconnected parts.

Part One: The Plan
Piper’s plan is very simple, but in those few pages he incorporates quite a lot of the ideas that have been written about for years by hundreds of investing experts – Burton Malkiel, John Bogle, and so on.

Here’s the idea. It’s possible to pick the best stocks if you have all of the information. However, there is so much information that it’s actually impossible for people – even people who devote their lives to the study – to absorb enough information to make those picks consistently.

What we can do is step back and look at some bigger patterns. Over the short term, the stock market fluctuates a lot – one only has to look at 2007 and 2008 to see that. Over the long term – ten to fifteen years or more – the stock market shows positive returns. Over even longer terms – twenty years or more – it shows very nice positive returns.

So, the first step is to figure out your goals. What are you saving for? How far off is that goal? If it’s not very far off, avoid the stock market – it’s too volatile. If it’s very far off (more than ten years), invest in the stock market – but invest in the whole stock market and do it as cheap as you can.

How do you do that? Buy index funds. Extremely broad index funds (like, for example, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index) let you own every stock in the stock market all at once, and the costs are very small.

So, your investment plan is this: if your goal is short term, invest a certain amount each week/month into bonds or CDs or something else very stable and with positive low returns. If your goal is long term, invest a certain amount each week/month into a broad based index fund. Then, forget about it until you get close to your goal.

Part Two: The Noise
Once you’ve made the decision to invest, the real trick is to filter out the noise.

First, train yourself to ignore what’s going on today, this week, this month, and this year. The stock market is volatile – live with it. The trick is to remember that you’re investing for the long term. Volatility doesn’t equal long-term risk. Another thing to remember is that short term stock market volatility is entirely unpredictable. So just ignore it.

Second, don’t bother chasing the “best” funds. Instead, just put your money in an index fund that matches the market for cheap. Why? A fund that’s the “best” one year is quite likely to not be the best in subsequent years – the market changes, investors herd into the fund and flood it with too much money so that the strategy doesn’t work any more, and there’s a lot of cost in jumping from fund to fund. Just pick a steady, average fund and leave it there – ignore the “fund of the minute” and the talking heads on CNBC.

Third, ignore specific stock tips. The ones in the media are often placed there by analysts who are set to profit from people following that tip. The one from your uncle might be useful or it might not be – but don’t bet your future on it. Ignore all the specific investment tips.

If you’re filtering out all of that, you’re left with just one thing: your plan. Keep investing, steady and surely, and don’t sweat the little swings or the panicked talking heads.

Is Oblivious Investing Worth Reading?
Oblivious Investing does a fantastic job of laying out the “buy and hold” strategy in layman’s terms that anyone can understand. For a person who simply wants to begin investing their money for the long term but doesn’t want to spend every day praying at the altar of CNBC, Oblivious Investing is a great read.

If you want detailed advice on portfolio management, this isn’t your book. If you want comparisons of individual investment strategies, this isn’t your book. Piper makes one big point throughout this book – he makes it thoroughly and clearly, but Oblivious Investing doesn’t try to be a Swiss Army investment book. If you want that, read The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing.

I should say, though, that I subscribe to the investing strategy in Oblivious Investing. It works well for me and this is the best layman’s description of it that I’ve yet read.

“Fred” writes in with a question along these lines:

I’m in my mid 20’s and just got my first job, currently make ~$50k. In 3 years I will graduate from medical residency and be making 3-4x that. I’ve had a very fortunate upbringing- no student loans, no credit card debt, and about $100k invested in securities. My question is regarding IRA and 401k contributions. Once I’ve contributed up to my 401k’s match, and max out my Roth IRA what should I do next? The current wisdom is to max out my 401k contribution. I feel quite certain that my taxes (once I make ~$200k annually) will eventually be much higher because of our spiraling debt/ Obama tax plan. Would it still be wise to max out my 401k?

There are several pieces of the puzzle worth discussing here.

First, never, ever count your chickens before they hatch. The most common mistake that I see people making is their assumption that they will be earning more in the future. That may be the plan, but plans can change – they are often derailed by life, health, changing interests, opportunities both missed and otherwise, and so on. Do not make spending decisions now based on what you hope will happen in the future.

When I found myself in a very long-term stable job in 2004, I made the mistake of essentially betting that I would have that income in perpetuity – nothing would keep me from earning that money until retirement. Flash forward to 2009 and what do I see? An opportunity came along and I jumped on board. I’m earning less than I might have otherwise, but every morning I feel absolutely that I made the right choice.

So many things can happen over the next few years. You might become disenchanted with your current work. You might fall in love and have a child. You might fall into ill health. In each of these events, you likely will not be earning three times your current salary in a few years.

Instead, a much more prudent path is to build a firm foundation for whatever may come. As I noted above, many people are at least peripherally aware of this, investing money into retirement. But retirement investing is just the start.

Build a very healthy emergency fund. It’s always useful to have at least six months’ worth of living expenses available in a very liquid place, like a high-interest savings account. Don’t be afraid of the size of the goal – just start an automatic plan to scoop some portion of your paycheck right into that savings account. Hold onto it – use it for big emergencies, then replenish it afterwards.

Invest in yourself. Never be afraid to invest money in making yourself better. Lose weight – if you have difficulty doing it on your own and can afford it, hire a trainer to motivate you. Get your teeth straightened and cleaned. Work on your self-confidence and take opportunities to speak in public. Invest in clothes that are well-made and durable – ones that will last through whatever may come.

Invest in a taxable account. If you’ve got an emergency fund, no debts, and a well-padded emergency fund, start investing in a taxable account. How exactly you do this depends on your risk – my recommendation is to invest in index funds using a buy-and-hold strategy. Hold onto that money for now and wait for opportunities to come to you. That money may eventually become a home. It may become the basis for a business. It may become the backbone of a very early retirement. Whatever it is, having it in a taxable account means you can utilize it for whatever you need, whenever you need it.

What about investing more for retirement? If you’re already maxing out an IRA and picking up all of your employer’s matching in your 401(k), your bases are pretty well covered for retirement. Investing beyond that can be helpful over the long run, but if you’re doing it at the expense of an emergency fund, your own personal health, or other personal goals, you should spend some time asking yourself what your true goals are.

My argument is simply this: money invested in a taxable account is likely a good option in this situation. While you do have to pay capital gains tax on the dividends (as well as on the gains if you sell the investments), that money can be used for any purpose without penalty: retirement, a home, startup money for a business, a wedding, education for a new career, or anything else that might come your way. Your future is not set in stone – don’t set all of your savings and investments in stone, either.

Good luck!

So before I can think too hard about it, I drive to my kids’ favorite place of business, the 99-cent store — where everything is now upward of $1.29 — to shop for an upcoming holiday. My extended family is coming to town for a big celebration, so I stock up on several items in bulk. Taking deep, relaxing breaths and focusing on the joy the plastic doodads I’m clutching will bring to my offspring and their cousins, I wait for the long line at the register to taper off. Then I unload the contents of my basket onto the raised counter, look up at the woman on the platform behind it and say, with a surprisingly steady voice, “I’m buying a lot. Would it be possible to get a discount?”

She looks at me, clearly taken aback and a little irritated. “I’d have to get the owner,” she says, as if that will end the conversation.

“OK,” I say.

She rings up three more customers while I wait, probably hoping I’ll give it up and go away, then reluctantly rouses herself and comes back with the owner, a kindly man to whom I repeat my question and fall silent.

He smiles at me. “Well,” he says, “you are buying a lot.”

He turns to the woman at the register. “Charge her 99 cents for these,” he says, pointing to eight items in my basket priced at $1.29. And these,” he says, waving at eight more priced at $1.49.

Then he looks at me apologetically, eyeing two large items selling for $1.99. “I can’t go any lower on those. Just the delivery charges have gotten so expensive.”
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“I understand,” I say.

Then he says, “OK, charge her $1.49.”

The woman at the register sourly does as she is told. I thank them both and pay in cash.

Unsurprisingly, with a story like that, the comments are pure gold, alternating between people sharing their own haggling tips and cheering on the writer to others disgusted at the thought of haggling at the dollar store.

My thoughts were pretty diverse on the issue, but I largely support what the woman did. Here are some of my thoughts on haggling – many of which I’m sure will generate some discussion.

A person’s desire and ability to haggle depends on their personality. Some people are born to haggle. Others are brought into it culturally. Others simply have neither the innate desire or the cultural pressure to do so – or only feel like it’s appropriate in some situations. Given that there are so many personal feelings about bargaining and there are vastly different cultural expectations about it in different parts of the world, it’s pretty much impossible to come to a single clear set of rules about what’s appropriate and what’s not when it comes to this art.

At the same time, it seems that in a world of haggling, introverts are directly financially penalized. A person who is naturally introverted or timid will simply not negotiate as strongly as an extroverted person who is willing to make a public scene to save a few dollars. Should the introvert be financially penalized for their nature? Would it be similarly appropriate to financially penalize people for other aspects of their nature – for the color of their skin, perhaps?

It’s because of this that I largely support standardized pricing within stores and competition among stores – everyone gets the same deal and the people who are rewarded are the people willing to put in the footwork and do comparison shopping, not the people who are willing to be pushy for it.

Businesses that expect haggling will price accordingly. Take yard sale pricing, for example. Whenever I run a yard sale, I usually price things on the high end of what I think is a reasonable yard sale price and I allow and encourage haggling. As the weekend goes on, I drop my prices over time.

This is true of many businesses, particularly “mom and pop” type businesses and also businesses from other cultures outside of the United States. They expect some degree of haggling from some percentage of customers and price accordingly. Quite often, I don’t mind not haggling at these events and paying their face price because I like supporting local businesses, but I have no qualms with haggling if a price seems particularly out of line.

Businesses that don’t expect haggling won’t tolerate it. On the other hand, in many stores, haggling simply does you no good. Large chain stores – particularly on less-expensive items – simply have no room at all to change prices. They’ll simply refuse – and you’ll simply have wasted your time. So, don’t haggle over the price of a tube of toothpaste at your local Target.

Taking those factors into account, I see no reason not to ask for a discount in many situations – but doing it where there’s no real chance of it working is annoying to those around you and potentially damaging to your reputation. If you’re standing in line at the local department store (that is obviously not a place with a haggling reputation) and make a big scene over trying to haggle over a few items, your only outcome will be to frustrate and annoy those around you. Even worse, some of those people might remember you – and your annoyance to them may come back to haunt you later.

My final point is perhaps the biggest one of all. If you feel the need to haggle for the item, why are you buying it at all? Take the example in the original story. Why is that person in the dollar store at all? Are “plastic doodads” from the dollar store really a worthwhile purchase?

While I can surely appreciate the sentiment of wanting to make a child happy, why not actually do something special with that time and money, like make a batch of their favorite kind of homemade ice cream together? Or even play a few simple games in the yard with them? Children are happy whenever you show them genuine love – it doesn’t have to take the form of a “plastic doodad” you bought for a buck at the dollar store.

This expands into a more general principle. Most of the items you might haggle for aren’t necessities at all. Unless you truly do want the item (and it passes the ten second rule), don’t even bother haggling over it or putting it into your cart. Just walk away and keep that cash in your pocket. Haggling to get a “deal” on something you don’t truly want and don’t need is just another way to watch your money slip through your fingers.

I look forward to your comments on haggling.

You often talk about investing in bonds. I don’t even understand what bonds are, let alone how to invest in them!

Well, let’s start at the beginning.

What Is a Bond?
To put it simply, a bond is a way for an investor to buy a piece of someone’s debt, usually a government or a large company.

Here’s a clear example. Let’s say your city wants to raise money to put in some new roads. They don’t have enough money in their current budget to pay for it, but they’re quite able to put aside money in future budgets for the bridge.

The city’s solution? Issue bonds. They sell bonds to the general public for a certain price (the issue price) to raise money. Investors buy these bonds from the city, putting their money directly in the city’s coffers.

What does the bond buyer get? A bond states that on some regular basis, the person buying the bond will receive a certain small payment (known as the coupon). Then, when the bond matures, the person who bought the bond will receive the face amount of the bond.

So, here’s another example. Let’s say you buy a $10,000 bond from the city. It’s set to mature in ten years (meaning the city will give you back your $10K at that time). Until then, the bond states that you’ll receive a payment of $175 every six months – that’s the coupon rate.

Usually, bonds are issued by governments and large corporations to finance big purchases that they don’t have the cash on hand to pay for at that moment. But that’s a risk, right? What if they can’t make good on that payment? That’s why bonds come with bond ratings, which give an indication of how reliable the organization issuing the bond is. Some issuers are very secure (like the governments of first world nations), while others are much less secure (companies that are in poor financial shape) – the latter are usually called junk bonds and aren’t solid investments for laypeople.

Advantages of Bonds
The big advantage of buying bonds is that they’re reliable. The bond issuer is legally bound to make those regular payments to you and to pay you back the face value when the bond matures. The only real risk is the stability of the bond issuer, which is why many people not involved in financial careers stick to very safe issuers, like the federal government.

Thus, if you stick to big issuers like the federal government, they’re quite safe, too.

Another benefit of bonds is that some types of bonds (particularly municipal bonds – ones issued by cities for improvement projects) have tax advantages. Most municipal bonds are exempt from federal and state income tax.

Disadvantages of Bonds
So why would you not invest in bonds, if they’re so safe? Typically, very safe bonds don’t have a very strong return at all.

Take, for example, current returns on bonds issued by the U.S. government. Short term ones (3 month, 6 month, and 1 year treasuries) are paying no coupon rate at all, which means that all the government has to do to fulfill the bond is pay you back the face value at the end – no interest, no nothing. The only way to make money on these right now is to buy them a bit below their face value – thankfully, the government sells these at auction, which means that you can buy them just a bit below their face value (but still return less than 1%). Alternately, you can lock your money down for thirty years – but you’ll only get 3.5% of the amount you invest in annual payments, which isn’t great, either.

While this is an extreme example that’s only occurring because of the special economic times we live in, the basic idea is still true – bonds typically don’t earn great returns. What they do is earn safe returns.

Buying Bonds
So how can you buy bonds?

If you’re interested in buying them from the federal government, you can buy them directly via Treasury Direct. For many people who want to handle all of their own investing, this is a great way to buy individual bonds.

If you’re interested in municipal bonds, you’ll likely have to buy them through a brokerage. Some municipalities allow individuals to buy bonds directly from them, but minimum investments are usually well into the thousands.

If you want to buy other types of bonds (bonds issued by other governments or by corporations), you’ll likely have to use a brokerage for such purposes.

My recommendations are pretty simple. Either buy federal bonds directly from Treasury Direct, or buy a bond index fund from a reputable investment house, like Vanguard (the one I use). Going beyond this requires both a strong sense of risk and a lot of time to appropriately research your options.

What’s a 529 plan? “A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged investment vehicle in the United States designed to encourage saving for the future higher education expenses of a designated beneficiary. It is named after section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code.”

Since my investing goal was a pretty long term one – college is at least fifteen years away for them, even now – I chose an aggressive portfolio for the investing – 90% stock index funds and 10% bonds. I then set up an automatic investment plan – $100 a month for each of them.

Notice the start dates, though – mid-2005 and mid-2007. In each case, my investments for their college education caught the full force of the recent stock market downturn. I’d log on every month or two to check on the investments to find that the balance had gone down, even after the contributions.

If it were simply an investment for my own retirement, I could internalize it with no problem. I can stomach losses for my own future, because I’m secure in my own knowledge that over the long run, the tendency of a diverse stock investment is to go up.

But I would look at the terrible 529 investment return, look at the pictures of my kids on my desk, and I’d feel guilty.

“I’m putting aside money for their future like I should be, but it’s falling through my fingers like sand. Their future is slipping away,” I would think to myself as I looked at the pictures, and I’d be sorely tempted to change that investment around to put the money into something more conservative.

It is incredibly easy to let emotions get in the way of rational choices when you’re a parent. You see your children so full of happiness and love, yet still dependent on you for so much, and you want desperately to ensure that they’re safe and that a bright future awaits them.

But emotional investing is the most dangerous kind of investing. When you invest with your emotions, you try to time the market. You sell late into panics and buy late into rallies. You often undo many of your earlier good choices. And, in the end, you’re left with much less than you would have had otherwise.

Instead, if you’re investing for the long term, you’re far better off removing your emotions from the equation as much as you can. Set up an automatic investment plan, sit back, and wait. Make adjustments only because you’re moving closer to your target date, shifting to more conservative options as the big day arrives (or, even better, invest in a plan that does this automatically for you). Look at the balance if you’d like, but don’t let a few poor balances cause you to make radical changes.

In short, be patient.

I look at those two pictures on that desk and I see two young children who rely on me to make many decisions and choices for them. I invest for them, of course, but I also do things like prepare their meals, help them get dressed, and regulate how much candy they can eat and how many DVDs they should watch. As much as I love them and want to maximize their safety, sometimes the best choice isn’t the one that my heart yearns to make.

Like you, I think the stock market is near the bottom right now and will go up greatly in the next three to five years. I have some extra cash (about $10K) but I don’t know exactly what to do with it to get on board. How would you do it?

In fact, I’m already doing it. My wife and I made the decision to start investing much of our long-term savings for a home into stocks because we both feel that the market is at the bottom right now and is poised for a big rebound in the next five to ten years.

So, what are we doing?

What Are We Investing In?
Most of our investment is going into index funds. For those unaware, index funds are a way to invest in a lot of stocks at once at a cheap price. A given index fund is usually governed by a simple rule – all stocks in the S&P 500, for example. Index funds have long been lauded as a great way to easily diversify at a very cheap cost.

We’re investing all of our money equally into two funds – the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (which basically covers all domestic stocks) and the Vanguard Total International Stock Index (which broadly covers all international markets). In other words, the money is as diverse as we can make it.

At the same time, there are a number of individual companies that my wife and I particularly believe in for one reason or another (Apple being one, for example). While we both recognize that individual stock investing is a risky proposition, we also know that our investment choices reflect the things we believe in.

So, we’re allocating a small portion of our overall investment into a diversity of individual stocks – 20, to be exact. Each month, we’re automatically investing a small amount into each of these twenty stocks. Our investment amount in individual stocks is about 25% of the amount we’re putting into index funds.

Who Are We Investing With?
Our index fund investments are handled by Vanguard. We’ve trusted them for years – they’re known for their low-cost index funds and their reliability, which is exactly what we want. They’re also managing my Roth IRA, which they’ve done quite well.

Our individual stocks are being managed by Sharebuilder, which we decided on after a fair amount of hand-wringing. Their automatic investment plans were simple and reasonably priced (without any of the factors that made us nervous about the few brokers that undercut Sharebuilder in price), plus we weren’t restricted in our investment choices (as many of the companies we wanted to invest in didn’t have direct plans for investing). Since we’re planning on just doing automatic investing until the time comes that we actually need the money and then we’ll sell all of it (no market timing here), the actual management of the money for tax purposes will be pretty straightforward, too.

Isn’t This Risky?
Undoubtedly it is. That’s why we’re not putting any of our emergency fund, any of our retirement, or any of our short-term saving goals at risk. The money we’re investing here is money that we will only tap in the long term (ten or fifteen years or so) for the place in the country we’ve always dreamed of. Ideally, the stock market will help take us there a bit quicker than we might be able to otherwise, but if it doesn’t work, we’ve not really risked anything that affects our day-to-day lives, then or now.

Also, this plan merely reflects what we’re doing. You might want to be more conservative with your own savings for long term goals like this, and you certainly wouldn’t want to do anything like this with money you will need to rely on in the future.

We’re only able to start doing things like this because we’ve cut our spending drastically over time and we live by a mantra of spending less than we earn. Because of that, we can now make choices like this, paving the way to our dreams.

My credit union has CDs. The rate for a three-month CD is 1.88% while the rate for a one-year is 2.37%. Is my math reading correctly when I come out with $2.37 (on a $100 deposit) for 1 year but if I chose to deposit in the three-month CD four times in a row (thus equaling the 1 year CD) that my return would be $7.52 (assuming the rate remains the same)? At the moment I’m not debating whether or not a CD is the best investment, simply asking about this particular set up.

This is actually a fairly common misconception that people have about how certificates of deposit work. In truth, the one year certificate of deposit will earn you noticeably more than the three month CD. Let’s dig into how this all works.

CDs are quoted with their annual rates of return. When you see a rate quoted on a certificate of deposit, you actually are seeing the annual rate of return on that CD – in other words, that’s the percent of your investment that would be earned if you held the investment for a full year. So, the three month certificate of deposit above would earn 1.88% only if it were held over the course of a full year.

A very simple example So, let’s say Dennis buys one of those three month CDs. This CD only pays interest upon maturity and earns 1.88%. Dennis buys one for $1,000. Over the course of a year, this investment would have earned $18.80, but the CD only lasts for three months, thus earning Dennis $4.70 after three months. If he were to take that $1,000 and buy another CD, then do it again, and again, at the end of the year, Dennis would have earned his $18.80.

Compounding Many certificates of deposit compound monthly, which means they pay out 1/12th of the year’s interest at the end of each month. So, in the above example, Dennis would actually see an interest payment of $1.57 every month.

Many certificates of deposit also allow you to put that earned interest directly onto the balance of the certificate of deposit, meaning it would also earn interest along the way. Let’s say Dennis bought a three month certificate of deposit under these conditions for $100,000. At the end of the first month, the certificate would earn $156.67 in interest, which would then be added to the balance of the certificate, making it worth $100,156.67. At the end of the second month, the certificate would earn $156.91 in interest, bringing the balance of the certificate to $100,313.58. At the end of the third month, the certificate would earn $157.16 in interest, at which point the certificate would close. As you can see, compounding monthly is much better than compounding annually.

Buying a certificate of deposit When you go to buy a certificate of deposit, it’s not enough just to know the rate and the term. You also need to know how often it compounds (the more often, the better) and if that compounded money rolls into the balance of the certificate (if it does, that’s better). Although these factors aren’t enough to overcome a large difference in rates, they do make all the difference for small differences in rates.

Dennis, in your situation, if you’re wanting to put your money away for a full year, the one year certificate of deposit is the best option. Buying consecutive three month certificates will not earn you as much as the one year certificate will.

Good luck!

I’m twenty eight years old and am now debt free. I’d like to start investing, but I have almost no tolerance for risk. I don’t mind not earning a great return because of this, but the thought of losing any of my investment makes me feel very uncomfortable. Any suggestions?

Before I begin, it’s worth noting that if you look only at extremely low-risk investments, you’re going to forego very nice returns in other investments. Most investments that include a significant amount of risk – like stocks, real estate, precious metals, and so on – are intended as long term investments. Yes, they lose significantly over short periods, but over longer periods (more than ten years), most of these investments do quite well, significantly better than investments with low risk. Low risk, low reward, after all.

It should also be noted that all of these investments – any investment that you might make – does have a number of risks. Even holding cash in your hand has risks. Inflation is a risk – over time, dollars become worth less than they used to be. Economic disaster is a small risk – look at what’s happened in Iceland and Zimbabwe in the last year. Investment house failure is another small risk, though virtually all of your investments will be insured.

That’s not the question that was asked, however. The big question here is how to invest with minimal risk. I see four distinct avenues for this that are available for most people.

Treasury notes These are basically direct investments in the United States federal government. You can buy these directly from the government at TreasuryDirect.

When you purchase a treasury note (or treasury bond, as they’re called for terms longer than ten years), you pay a certain price (set at auction) for a note that has a face value and a coupon rate. Each year (it’s actually split into two payments, paid every six months), you’re paid out a percentage of the face value (the percentage is the “coupon rate”). At the end of the time frame of the note, the government will pay you that amount.

So, let’s say there’s a ten year treasury note for $10,000 available with a 2% coupon rate, and you can buy this note for $9,800. Every six months, the government would pay you $100 during that ten year period, totaling $2,000 in payments, and at the end, you’ll get the $10,000 back.

These are about as safe an investment as you can get – if these start to fail, there’s going to be a global economic meltdown beyond comprehension. However, they typically don’t earn a great return – it’s usually something just a bit higher than whatever inflation is at the moment.

Alternately, you can invest in TIPS, which are much the same, except (in effect) the coupon rate is recalculated regularly to take inflation into account. These generally just barely match inflation, but often sell for rates higher than their face value (you’ll have to pay more than $10,000 to get one with a $10,000 face value).

Cash Another safe thing to do with your money is to simply keep it as cash. Put it in a high-yield savings account (below the amount insured by the FDIC – currently $250,000) and just simply let it earn interest over time. Online savings accounts tend to vary their rates based roughly on the actions of the Federal Reserve, and since the Reserve has their rates very low right now, online accounts aren’t earning particularly well – 2% to 3.5% is pretty expected. However, if the Fed begins raising rates, many of those banks will begin raising their interest rates, too, up to the 5 to 6% that was once reasonable to expect back in 2006 or so.

Efficiency and self-sufficiency Many people who are concerned about the long-term safety of financial investments are trending towards investing in long-term self sufficiency and efficiency. This would basically involve improvements to your living situation so that you’re not reliant on basic services provided by others: electrical self-sufficiency, food self-sufficiency, and so on.

Some examples of this include buying a home in a rural area, installing a well or a sand point for a renewable water source, installing solar panels or a wind turbine for renewable energy for yourself, setting up a greenhouse and perhaps some micro-farming facilities for self-sustaining food sources, and so on.

If this has appeal to you, many people who are adopting this mode of operation are currently selling their surplus production at farmer’s markets or directly to grocery stores or selling excess energy back to the electrical grid. This creates something of a profit on the effort in the short term, subsidizing the capital investments. Plus, with such self-sustaining materials around you, you won’t be spending much at all on regular bills.

Yourself A final route to consider for investment is investing in yourself. What sorts of self-improvement (that would help your career or earning potential) could you make? Perhaps it’s worth investing in dental work. Perhaps some continuing education might be worth your while. Perhaps you need to update your wardrobe a bit.

All of these areas lead directly to some sort of financial return without much risk.

However, there is something else worth considering. It won’t lead directly to financial return, but it is a worthwhile use of your money. Charitable giving. You always have the ability with your money to help bring about profound positive changes in the lives of others.

Hopefully, you’ve now got some things to chew on. Good luck!

How does this work? Let’s take a look at a real world example – the S&P 500. Here are the annual rates of return of the S&P 500 over eight recent years.

In 2000, the S&P 500 returned -10.14%.
In 2001, the S&P 500 returned -13.04%.
In 2002, the S&P 500 returned -23.37%.
In 2003, the S&P 500 returned 26.39%.
In 2004, the S&P 500 returned 9.00%.
In 2005, the S&P 500 returned 3.01%.
In 2006, the S&P 500 returned 12.80%.
In 2007, the S&P 500 returned 3.81%.

Annual rate of return Almost all advertising for mutual funds uses the average annual rate of return to talk about how “good” that investment is. It’s pretty easy to calculate the average annual rate of return – just add up all the numbers and divide by the number of years.

In the above case, the average annual rate of return is 1.06% (it’s actually -3.31% if you want to include the abysmal 2008 in your numbers). Considering that this period includes two severe recessionary markets and only one bull market, that’s actually fairly reasonable.

One would expect, then, that an investment of $100 in that fund from 2000 to 2007 would earn 1.06% each year, leaving us with a total of $108.80 after the eight years, right?

Actually, that’s wrong – but it’s what the investment advertisers would like you to think.

How it actually works If you walk through the numbers, year by year, you’ll see that in fact you would wind up with less than $108.08 in your investment.

In 2000, the S&P 500 returned -10.14%, meaning your $100 investment became worth $89.86.
In 2001, the S&P 500 returned -13.04%, meaning your $89.86 investment became worth $78.14.
In 2002, the S&P 500 returned -23.37%, meaning your $78.14 investment became worth $59.88.
In 2003, the S&P 500 returned 26.39%, meaning your $59.88 investment became worth $75.68.
In 2004, the S&P 500 returned 9.00%, meaning your $75.68 investment became worth $82.49.
In 2005, the S&P 500 returned 3.01%, meaning your $82.49 investment became worth $84.97.
In 2006, the S&P 500 returned 12.80%, meaning your $84.97 investment became worth $93.05.
In 2007, the S&P 500 returned 3.81%, meaning your $93.05 investment became $96.60.

So, while the ad might brag about a 1.06% annual rate of return, the truth is that you actually lost a bit of money in that investment.

Why? The average annual growth rate – which grew 1.06% over the period, remember – is only accurate if you reset the investment to $100 each and every year at the end of the year. That means that at the end of each losing year, you contribute enough extra money to bring the balance back to $100, and at the end of each winning year, you take out all of your gains.

That’s not how most people invest – we tend to buy and hold, not take out our gains every year. Thus, the “average annual rate of return” really doesn’t mean too much to us. Investment houses use it because it’s a simple and accurate number that is almost always higher than the real returns we would see if we were investing.

What can you do? If you’re considering an investment, don’t pay any attention to the average annual rate of return. Instead, focus entirely on the compound annual growth rate – that’s the interest rate that truly reflects how much you’ll earn over a longer-term investment if you just buy and hold. Look for that number in the investment literature – and if you can’t find it, ask for it.

Obviously, these ads have popped up because of the current economic conditions. The fear in the air is thick, and it is considered conventional wisdom that gold is a safe place to hold your money in times of uncertainty.

Unsurprisingly, these salesmen are capitalizing on that sense of fear. These individuals were cherry-picking quotes from news stories to prove their suggestion that the economy is in meltdown. They mentioned such things as a 4% plunge in retail sales during the holiday season, the sixteen year high in unemployment, and other rather disconcerting news stories about the current economic situation.

Not mentioned, of course, were other news articles like the recent sharp drop in new unemployment claims or the fact that business and individual balance sheets are getting healthy fast or the presence of many signs that we’ve reached the bottom.

What’s the next step in the sales job? They make it seem easy and safe to invest in gold. They provide all the help you’ll need with just a single phone call or a click – an easy solution to all this fear.

There’s nothing at all unusual about what they’re doing. It’s salesmanship 101 – and much of our economy runs on it. It’s all about creating the appearance of something better than what you have now.

But it works particularly well with gold, and here’s why.

Almost every investment is driven by supply and demand. If there’s more of something available – meaning there are more people selling it than buying it – then eventually it will cost less. Think of it in terms of the Beanie Baby phenomenon of the late 1990s – when the price was rising, there were many more buyers than sellers, but once the buyers dried up (or turned into sellers), the price fell rather quickly.

Gold is no different. When there are more buyers than sellers, the price goes up. When there are more sellers than buyers, the price goes down.

However, gold has a special factor that doesn’t really exist with many other investments: hoarding. Most of the gold that exists in the world is being hoarded by someone in the form of jewelry, gold coins, and so on. Think of wedding rings – once these items are made, they’re essentially hoarded. Large banks often do the same thing – they have tons of gold and they just sit on it, never intending to sell it.

That means that, quite simply, there isn’t that much gold available to be bought and sold at any given time – and that means that even a slight increase in the number of buyers can send the price skyrocketing and even a slight increase in sellers can send the price downwards. That’s why the price fluctuate so much – if one big hoarder decides to sell, it can easily affect the whole market.

That leads us back to our salesmen. They’re talking fear and proposing buying gold as a way to make things safer. If you follow their suggestion, you become a gold buyer – without another seller joining the party. That means the price goes up slightly – you take some gold off the market and hoard it. Not only that, they make a little bit in the process by serving as your broker.

No wonder the economic downturn has brought out the gold ads in abundance.

I’m not claiming that gold is in any way a bad investment – it’s not. But it’s not the be-all end-all solution that it’s often being sold as. Gold is fine as a small part of your overall financial situation, but don’t move all of your money into one asset, ever.

And, as always, be most cautious when a salesman is using the hard sell to convince you to do it.

Personally, I found the story fascinating, and apparently many of you have as well, because I’ve received a ton of questions and comments about Madoff and Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes. Here are some of my thoughts on the most common questions brought up by readers, especially in terms of understanding what happened and what impact it has on you and your future moves.

What’s a Ponzi scheme?
Most of the descriptions of Ponzi schemes that are floating around out there in articles are really confusing, so I thought I’d start off with a clear example of a Ponzi scheme.

Let’s say I wanted to start a Ponzi scheme to get rich really quickly. I’d put an advertisement out there saying that I had an investment opportunity that would return, say, 25% of your investment each year, guaranteed. Obviously, that’s a claim that I’m not going to be able to back up with any real investment, but it’s a strong enough claim that I’m likely to get a few people who want to invest.

Ten people invest in my scheme the first year at $10,000 each, giving me $100,000 to work with. At the end of the year, I actually pay out that 25% to each investor, sending them checks for $2,500 each, leaving me with $75,000. These ten people are amazed by the success, so they each tell five friends about the scheme, plus my original ad draws in ten more people.

So, at the start of year two, I have fifty referred people into my scheme and ten more from my ad. They send me $10,000 each, giving me $600,000 to add to my account, leaving me with a total of $675,000. I keep promoting, and at the end of the year, I write seventy checks for $2,500 (that 25% return to each investor), totaling $175,000. That leaves me with $500,000.

Now, during that year, I’ve managed to attract 100 more customers, who send me $10,000 each at the start of year three. I now have $1.5 million sitting there, but at the end of the year, I need to pay out $2,500 to 170 customers.

I don’t want to do that, so I take that $1.5 million and vanish to South America. Of the investors, the original ten got 50% of their money back, then the next sixty got 25% of their money back. Everyone else got nothing.

So what is a Ponzi scheme? It’s one where you promise rich returns in order to get a lot of investors into your scheme, then you pay “returns” to the early investors out of the initial investments of later investors, until it looks like you’re going to be paying out more than you’re bringing in, at which point you close up shop and disappear with the loot.

How did Madoff get away with this kind of scheme?
Madoff’s primary tool for making the scheme work was the respect from others he had built up during his long career on Wall Street. He had been the chairman of NASDAQ and was intimately involved in the organization and technology involved in setting it up. He had also been running a fund for many, many years and had discussed at length his investing strategies (which were pretty complicated).

At some point along the line, Madoff began to not see the success that he had been claiming with his investing strategy and quietly began to convert things into a Ponzi scheme. He began to focus heavily on marketing his investment fund, attracting new investors all the time, and when these people would invest, he would use that money to pay out to earlier investors who were leaving the fund. So, for example, if he were taking in new investments and could actually return 8% on them, he was claiming a 12% return and actually paying that out to investors who were leaving the fund.

It’s easier to think of this in raw numbers. Let’s say you have $100 of someone else’s money and you have that invested somewhere where you can earn 8% on it. You tell that person (and everyone else who will listen) that you can earn 12% on their money. After the first year, that initial person wants their $100 back (with that 12% return), but five more want to invest. You take the $100 they invested, plus the $8 you actually earned, plus the $500 the new investors gave you, and you pay out $112 to the original investor. Now you have five investors, but you have only $496 and it’s only earning 8%. Next year, four of those investors want out with their $112 each (total $448). You have only $535.68 on hand, but you pay out the money. You actually only have $87.68 on hand right now (earning 8%), but the lone remaining investor believes he has $112 with you (earning 12%). It won’t be good when that last investor comes to collect his money.

That’s eventually what happened to Madoff. When the stock market tanked in late 2007 and 2008, investors wanted their money out in droves and he simply ran out of money to pay the inflated returns he had been promising everyone because he wasn’t actually earning those returns.

Can any of this possibly affect me?
Madoff’s scheme won’t directly affect you unless you were invested in the scheme.

So why should we pay attention to it at all? It’s a stark reminder of the danger of greed. Madoff got greedy with his own fund and kept seeking more investors so he could keep living the high life. The investors themselves were greedy because they were trying out investments that they didn’t really understand just in the hopes of getting a big return.

What warning signs should I look for?
Here’s the big one: if someone is promising you returns that blow away what can be found easily in the S&P 500, don’t believe it. They’re selling you something fishy. Investing returns in the double digits do not grow on trees, and if they’re guaranteed, something inappropriate is likely going on. Avoid it for your own safety.

That’s not to say you can’t earn returns higher than 10-15% or so – one certainly can. But a person is not going to find that return by investing in someone else’s investment package. You’re much more likely to find it in small events in your everyday life. For example, a couple years ago, I turned a nice and quick profit reselling Nintendo Wiis when they were very hot, earning far more than a 10% annual return. However, such opportunities aren’t sold as investment packages.

Similarly, if you don’t understand how an investment works, don’t invest in it. This is an investing rule I always follow. The only stocks I purchase are very broad mutual funds that basically amount to investments in the idea of American business as a whole. Why? I understand how they work. I don’t invest in individual companies. Why? I don’t have enough information to truly understand how they work. I don’t invest in non-index mutual funds. I don’t invest in hedge funds. I don’t invest in anything I hear about from friends or acquaintances.

If I don’t know how it works, I’m trusting someone else to understand it for me – and, more importantly, I’m trusting that person to always have my best interests at heart. With people like Bernie Madoff out there, it’s not a risk anyone should take.

Good luck!