So, why have only 6% of all US households installed even one CF lightbulb?

It can’t be the economics. After all, a typical CF bulb saves the user more than $66 over its lifetime. Count the bulbs in your house, multiply by 66…

It can’t be the environmental impact. CF bulbs actually reduce the amount of mercury in the environment, because even though there’s a tiny amount of mercury vapor in each bulb, the amount of coal production they cut down more than makes up for it. Add to that the hundreds of pounds of greenhouse gases they reduce… (if you had to buy and bring home the gases with each purchase, I think it would make a difference in the the relative sales).

And it’s not the geopolitical impact either. If we switched all our bulbs, we could stop importing oil altogether. Without giving up one Hummer.

So, why are people apparently immune to the benefits. I mean, why won’t we even try one of the bulbs?

I’m afraid I don’t have the answer. In addition to the above reasons, one thing people often overlook is that often utilities will PAY for you to use compact flourescent bulbs. Last year I looked into replacing all of the bulbs in my apartment with flourescent bulbs. When I found out that my power company would reimburse me for it, it was a no brainer.

They save money, they’re good for the environment, and they last long so you don’t have to mess around with changing bulbs as often. What’s not to like?

Just to recap, this site was originally to track my progress in saving up $45K to fund my around the world trip. That’s still on the table, but this site also contains my musings on money, career, investing, life, etc. All that good stuff. First the goal for the new year.

Working for other people sucks. Period. The weird thing is that I actually kinda, sorta like my job. It’s not so much this job, but the fact that it is still a job. I think I will be unhappy at work as long as I answer to someone else. I’ve only touched on this in the past, but 2007 will be the year that I get on the ball. It’s time to work for myself. I don’t know when it will happen (not likely this year) or how (although I have some ideas) but it’s time to get serious about this. I’d take half of what I’m making now if I could be my own boss.

Here’s just January 1st update for my adventure fund. December was a decent month, but I suspect January will likely be flat or even decrease slightly due to bills from Christmas being due.

Happy New Year everyone!

Okay, that should help. Now, let’s get a few things to get out of the way. Because there was a one week hiatus, some of you submitted two entries. In such a case, I chose one article to use. Also, all entries were accepted providing they actually had something to do with investing. Surprisingly, some didn’t. What’s up with that? Anyway, on to the links!

To begin with, while there is a plethora (that’s right, a plethora) of articles worth reading, here are the Editor’s top 5 picks listed in no particular order.

• Robert D Flach aka The Wandering Tax Pro has a great article about comparing taxable investments vs. tax-free investments such as munis. Good stuff!
• In keeping with the tax theme (it must be the end of the year or something!), Jim over at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity asks Is Your Retirement Investing Strategy Tax Efficient? Well, is it? Go find out!
• Super Saver over at My Wealth Builder writes Why I Don’t Use DRIPs Anymore
• The Bionic Blogger known as Trent over at The Simple Dollar talks about Calculating Phil Town’s Sticker Price. (Note: article has nothing to do with actual stickers, although it does deserve a gold star)
• Erich over at LifeTraining - Online says that there are 10 Questions that Determine your Financial Fitness.

And here’s the best of the rest:

• Brandon Peele presents The Economics of Self-Awareness posted at GT
• Ashish Hanwadikar presents Investment Strategy posted at Ashish’s Niti.
• bill presents A REALLY Stupid Idea posted at Ask Uncle Bill.
• Tyler presents 5 Rules For Winning Dividend Stocks posted at Dividend Money.
• Andy Boyd presents The difference between Saving and Investing posted at Wealth Talker.
• H.S. Ayoub presents Could Tiny Ask.com Help Topple Google? posted at SciTech Investor.
• FMF presents How to Make Your Child a Millionaire posted at Free Money Finance.
• Growth in Value presents I’m $697.83 richer thanks to pfblogs.org posted at Growth in Value.
• Dominic presents Trend Trading Systems posted at Trader Knowledge.
• Azmi Mufti presents Predicting the Ups and Downs of Stocks posted at American Desi Notes.
• William Wallets presents Investing 103: Isolating Your Investing Habits posted at A Financial Revolution.
• Flexo presents The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Credit Cards, Part 1: The Good posted at Consumerism Commentary.
• John Hill presents Law of Tenfold Return posted at Universe Of Success.
• MoneyMan presents Peter Lynch’s One Up on Wall Street posted at Watch Your Wallet.
• Daily Dose of Opimism presents Some Wisdom on “Hedge Funds” that Don’t Hedge posted at Daily Dose of Opimism.
• Jason Hamlin presents Sasol and the Liquid Coal Revolution posted at Gold Stock Bull.
• Renthusiast presents Manhattan gets ready for “Bonus Bump” posted at Renthusiast.
• Surfer Sam presents Stock Investment Fraud Exposed. Swindler Plays the Game Well posted at Surfer Sam and Friends.
• Matthew Paulson presents Why They Want You to Be Broke! posted at Getting Green.
• TJP presents 101 Ways to Invest money - Complete Series posted at Investor Trip.
• Tracy Coenen presents Apple Computer stock option problem posted at Sequence Inc..
• fedor presents MONEY MANAGEMENT and FOREX posted at forexblog.
• Silicon Valley Blogger presents All Hail To The January Effect posted at The Digerati Life.
• TradeRadarOperator presents How to Profit in Today’s Real Estate Market posted at Trade Radar.
• Jeff Burkey presents Against All Odds posted at HedgeFundDomain.
• Steve Faber presents 5 Keys to Getting Good Buys on Great Stocks posted at Debt Free.
• Dan Melson presents Unsustainable Loans You Should Not Use to Purchase a Property posted at Searchlight Crusade.
• makingourway presents How 1% improvement in return makes our lifetime savings plan work posted at makingourway.
• Ben presents How to Buy Low, Sell High, and Reduce Risk by Rebalancing Your Investment Portfolio posted at Money Smart Life.
• The Dividend Guy presents 2006 Results for The Dividend Guy posted at The Dividend Guy Blog.
• Michael K. Dawson presents Mr. Government Will You Keep Your Cotton-Picking Hands Out of the Market: I am Trying to Make a Buck posted at The Time and Money Group.
• Bill Shepler presents Options Sentiment in Danger Zone posted at Zen’s Market Insights.
• The Thirst Trader presents The Trading System and Five Golden Rules posted at The Thirsty Trader.

Whew! There you have it. Thanks to everyone for participating and thanks for stopping by Adventure Money. May the new year bring you health, wealth and good parking spaces. Cheers!

Yeah, I know I’ve been MIA for a while. Get off my back! I do hope to get back in the swing of things in the coming weeks. For now, however, I’d like to talk about a few Internet financial resources that I really like but don’t see mentioned when making my rounds in the personal finance world, at least not enough.

The first is the Vanguard Diehards forum over at Morningstar.com. I read a lot of personal finance sites and while sites such as CNNMoney or Yahoo! Finance are useful, perhaps the best information on investing can be found on the Diehard forum.

Now, as with any Internet message board, you should always take things with a boulder of salt, but after reading a while you should start to get a sense of who is worth listening to and who isn’t. Take the one month challenge - read the forum for one month and you’ll be amazed how much you learned.

The next two resources I’ll group together since they are somewhat similar. Financial-planning.com and FA-mag.com are both industry print magazines for financial planners that also have an online presence. The articles from each issue are posted online and can be read by anyone. Because of the intended audience, there are a few things you should know. First, some of the articles may not be of interest, such as articles related to practice management, but there are many articles worth checking out. Second, some of the material may be beyond the “range” of people just looking for personal finance tips. Still, I’d encourage you not to be intimidated and check it out.

For my last pick, another forum. Most people are familiar with Kiplinger magazine and Kiplinger.com. The latter has a pretty active community of posters on the Kiplinger forums that I’ve found to be pretty useful. All of the previous disclaimers regarding the Diehard forums apply here as well.

So those are my picks. Do you have a favorite financial resource that you don’t think gets enough love?

Below is a Badge of Google’s stock price and chart:

Right now the consensus projection is 115K net new jobs created for November. I guess we’ll find out at 8:30 AM EST.

I think this is especially important these days as the US economy finds itself in a rather precarious state. As you may have heard, the US economy has been slowing recently, largely due to the housing sector meltdown. Thus far there has been some indication that the effects of the housing slowdown have spilled over into other sectors of the economy, but nothing is conclusive yet.

Over the next few months we’ll find out of the Fed has pulled off the “soft landing.” Basically what that means is that the Fed slowed the economy enough to contain inflation, but not enough to plunge the economy into recession. Typically, this is very difficult to do and quite frankly the Fed fails more than it succeeds at pulling it off. Think of it as walking a tightrope. Too far to the right, you’re screwed. Too far to the left, ditto.

As it stands right now, signs are inflation pressures have eased and the economy has definitely slowed, but is it done slowing? Or in the “soft landing” parlance: Are we on the ground yet?

Two particular items released in the next two days should help provide further guidance. On Thursday, the Initial Unemployment Claims number will be released for last week. On Friday, the Nonfarm Payrolls data for November is released. For now, though let’s look at the…

Initial Claims

The initial claims number is released every Thursday at 8:30 AM EST by the Department of Labor. The data are a compilation of state unemployment claims filed in the last week. The idea is that these data gives us a hint at status of the labor market. Are claims increasing? That’s bad. Claims decreasing? G-o-o-o-d.

Typically, anything under 400,000 new unemployment claims indicates expansion in the labor market. That’s right, even if hundreds of thousands of people are filing for unemployment, that doesn’t necessarily mean the labor market is hurting. Why? Well, there’s always turnover in the economy regardless of how the things are going. Companies merge or go out of business and people get laid off. At the same time, however, other people are getting new jobs with different companies.

Problems with the Initial Claims data

There several problems with the Initial Claims data that must be understood in order to give the statistics proper weight.

First, weekly unemployment claims are extremely volatile. To account for this, economists typically look at a four-week moving average. This is designed to help smooth out the peaks and valleys and get a better sense of the underlying trend. Below is a chart from Briefing.com, which has an excellent economic indicator calendar by the way.

The blue line represents the four-week moving average. As you can see, it’s a much smoother line than the greenish one, which represents the weekly data. You’ll also notice a huge spike in that weekly number. Last week the weekly number came in at 357,000, much higher than previous readings. Is it the start of a trend? A one-time blip? Well, that’s why Thursday’s number is perhaps more important that usual. Another similar number might indicate a weakening labor market.

Another problem with the unemployment claims number is that it only reports, um, unemployment claims! Unfortunately, many people who are unemployed aren’t eligible to apply for unemployment insurance. So we don’t always get the full picture.

These are but a couple of reasons the initial claims data isn’t one of the “heavyweight” economic indicators. It’s useful to some degree, but usually it’s not as crucial as some other indicators. The four-week moving average is perhaps a bit more telling, but even that isn’t always reliable.

All in all, the initial claims data is still worth watching as it does give at least some insight into the labor market. This week, in particular, it will be watched more closely than usual as it might give some indication if Ben has landed the plane or if we’re still in the air.

I now have to reveal 5 secrets you might not know about me.

• 1. In addition to my love of finance, I’m an aspiring screenwriter. Sadly, my free time is very limited these days and I don’t have as much time to write as much as I’d like.
• 2. *Ahem* Although I’m an aspiring screenwriter living in Los Angeles, I’m not a waiter! (For those wondering, I am a business/financial consultant).
• 3. I have pet rats named after characters from the movie The Three Amigos.
• 4. I’ve made numerous spur-of-the-moment, post 2:00 AM road trips to Las Vegas while in college. (There’s nothing like reaching the California-Nevada stateline at 6:00 AM, fighting to stay awake, and wondering, “What the hell are we doing?”)
• 5. I’m a bigtime Dodger fan (which isn’t always easy) and a fantasy baseball dork.

Okay, now it’s my turn to tag some bloggers. I tag:

Ricemutt over at Experiments in Finance

Jennifer over at Broke-Ass Student (new blogger, check out her site)

Flexo over at Consumerism Commentary

Jonathan over at My Money Blog

LA Money Guy over at It’s Just Money

Okay, guys and gals, let’s hear 5 things we don’t know about you.

I may be dropping this update soon as my goals have undergone a bit of a shift since I started this blog. Lately, I’ve been more interested in funding an early retirement rather than funding a one-time round the world trip. Anyway, we’ll see, but for now it was a good month: +$2,287, largely due to a bonus at work.