Research shows the average gamer is:

• 24 years old
• Three out of 10 are women
• Most are college students or work in information technology departments.
• Only 2 percent are unemployed

My interest and dividends are creeping up ever so slowly due to my cash hoarding. Despite the general stock market turbulence, my unrealized-gains increased a respectable $356.13. My expenses were up quite a bit since May. This can be attributed to buying a Roomba and dating again.

Interest yields stayed flat for me. Due to the magic of compound interest, I’m making slightly more each month than last month. Here are the current interest rates of interest:

• Wamu / Chase: 0.75%
• Emigrant Direct: 1.55%
• ING: 1.5%

Dividends increased for the same reason as interest. My Scottrade portfolio yielded the same (but still impressive) 6.3% while Sharebuilder creeped up to 4%. You can see how I created my Sharebuilder portfolio and what securities I own in it here.

My current assets stayed flat in June as I threw everything I received at my student loans. It dropped slightly because I have $500 in transfer in preparation for payday July 3rd. Investments are up slightly; however, if I ignore contributions they will be flat as well. (Another big drop in my liabilities of $2,883.43! I also noticed that my current assets (cash related) are just slightly less than my total liabilities (total debt). This means that as of today, I will have enough cash to completely eliminate all my debt! I won’t do it since it will leave me without an emergency fund, and leave my system of accounts in disarray. Further, the interest from my student loans is tax-deductible and the credit card arbitrage is 0%.

My short-term ratios are unchanged. I’ve kept my cash situation the same and used my excess to knock out debt. This is demonstrated by my Long Term Liquidity and Leverage ratios. I’m down to 48% debt utilization and my debt-to-equity is below 1 (total liabilities are finally smaller than my net worth)! This is largely psychological, but it gives me a sense of just how leveraged I am.

My wealth performance continues to decline as my wealth increases. My profit margin and savings rate took a major hit with my increased expenses. I’ll need to keep those in check for July. My rate of return (interest and dividends) remained flat for the most part. Right now I include my retirement account which doesn’t generate any cash flow, so I may exclude that in future calculations. Even if it did, I wouldn’t be able to touch them except with a major tax penalty. ROA and ROE were extremely nice even though they are decreasing as well. ROA has been boosted by my casino winnings. ROE is based on my net worth, so it will continue to be difficult to generate these kind of returns.

North Carolina has taken steps to demonstrate this economic theory to the world. From my reading of various articles, North Carolina wants to pretend that people who use Amazon’s affiliate program are actually employees of Amazon. This means that Amazon has an official presence in North Carolina, which means that the state is entitled to tax all revenues from the affiliate program. (Currently, unless a company has a physical presence in the state, purchases are tax free.)

Amazon has responded to this in the most obvious way: they have cancelled all affiliate accounts to people who live in North Carolina. Here is the complete email sent to former affiliates:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date.

Please be assured that all qualifying referral fees earned prior to June 26, 2009 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with our regular referral fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of June 26, 2009, any final payments will be paid by September 1, 2009.

In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.

We have enjoyed working with you and other North Carolina-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

The trip pretty fantastic even besides the winnings. I was flown out for free, put into a free room, and had all my my meals paid for. I ate at several gourmet restaurants and had some of the best prime rib I can remember.

On my downtime I took the river taxis up and down the Colorado river. Of course the whole trip was filled with some nice down time to get some reading in (which I’ve been neglecting lately).

On the financial side, I left with $1,000 and some change ($30) but came back with $1,700 and change ($150). I don’t count anything below hundred dollar bills for gambling purposes but I ended up with a wad of twenties. I hit 4 deuces twice – once on a dollar machine (paying $1,000) and once on a quarter machine (paying $250). I was very close to having and even $2,000 but I never quite made it. I believe I got as high as $1,800 at my best.

Black Jack continues to be my nemesis. I only played two sessions but managed to be utterly destroyed in both. The amount of the deck that the dealer will play through before reshuffling is known as “the shoe.” I’ve never seen it before, but I managed to go through an entire shoe without winning a single hand.

Still, I cannot complain and I’m sure I’ll be back for more!

Fortunately, I was able to notice a pattern in the dating process. Dating requires 3 steps:

1. A place to meet people
2. Small Talk
3. The First Date

1. Conventional wisdom is that a place to meet people should ideally be something that you already enjoy to make that your potential date has some similar interests. So if you like ballroom dancing, taking a ballroom dancing class would be a place to start. In this brave new world of technology, I opted to try the internet. There are a huge number of dating websites, but I chose several that were free to use and allowed me to narrow the potentials down. My favorite sites are OkCupid and PlentyOfFish. OkCupid gets extra points for having numerous quizzes and questions you can answer to give a “match percentage.” Although I’m not sure how accurate it is, seeing the type of quizzes someone takes and the answers can save a lot of time. For example, I took a quiz that determined my political outlook (libertarian). A potential match had also taken this test but her result was socialist, so I knew we wouldn’t get along on some key issues.

2. Small talk is also made much easier with a basic profile. Favorite foods, books, movies, etc are often the first things to be mentioned and will give you a quick glimpse into some easy topics of conversation. There is usually one category which contains a laundry list of items which I’ve found to be a good indicator of what that person does with their spare time. If they list out 20 bands or so, then they spend a lot of time thinking about music. Myself, I have a long list of books and explicitly state “I love reading.” In contrast, I have three or so tv shows listed, and they’re all classicss (Seinfeld, Sopranos, Simpsons).

3. Once you met someone you believe has potential, it’s time for the first date! In asking people or looking for ideas, I’ve found that most suggestions are going to be a variation on a) eating and b) walking and talking. Eating includes:

• Going to lunch
• Going to dinner
• Getting coffee
• Getting ice cream
• Going on a picnic
• Wine tasting
• Going to a bar / lounge

Walking and talking is a much better idea since it lets both of you get to know each other more quickly. Some of my favorites:

• Going to a park
• Going to a dog park (great fun!)
• Going to a museum
• Exploring a new town
• Going to a farmer’s market
• Going to a downtown area
• Miniature Golf

It’s quickly apparent that the first list involves spending money and eating (things most of us need to do a bit less of) while the second list are all free or low cost. I think it also says quite a bit about a person if they’re willing to do frugal activities with you (ie, hopefully they will share the love of saving money).

Through the wonders of technology, meeting people, small talk, and even the first date all have frugal alternatives to the traditional dinner and a movie. Wish me luck with my search. What have your experiences been with frugal dating? Please share and ideas or stories!

I was able to save nearly the entirety of my paychecks, turned $500 into $1,400 thanks to Nevada, received a small amount of interest and dividends, and had some positive growth on my investment portfolio. All of this contributed to a substantial $4,582.31 growth in May.

As usual, interest wasn’t very exciting. The percentages on the bottom of each box indicate the implied yield given my closing balance (my balances tend to remain steady but this still causes some error). ING continues to offer one of the higher yields and is my spot for parking cash for my slush fund and the money from doing credit card arbitrage. The interest rates were as follows:

• Wamu / Chase: 0.75%
• Emigrant Direct: 1.55%
• ING: 1.5%

Although I do like to chase interest rates, 5 basis points isn’t enough for me to do anything. $10,000 would yield $0.42 extra per month extra.

Once again dividends give me good reason to keep my money invested. 6.3% or 3.2% look pretty incredible when compared to the yields from interest.

Now here is something to be excited about! The principal on my loans has dropped by about $150 while my overall portfolio (including retirement) has jumped over $1,500! I don’t have much faith in the current market enthusiasm, but it does bring a smile to my face.

Here are the last three months of my balance sheet. Like a good cynical American I’ve been hoarding cash increasing my current assets over $3,000 from April. My retirement account and investments have been carried up with the overall rising tide in equities. If it continues much longer I may cash out completely. I’m very excited that my current assets are almost greater than my total liabilities. When that happens I will have the ability to pay off all my debts in cash (though of course I’ll still milk my credit cards for all they are worth). Speaking of liabilities, I paid the minimum requirement on these throughout May to boost my cash reserves so they fell a small amount. All said and done, I’ve hit the psychological five-figure net worth tier. It’s pretty incredible that I’ve increased it by over $10,000 since February.

I fixed one of the formulas (I believe it was rate of return) so this may not match up with the prior month’s numbers completely. All of my short-term ratios are good. I have more than adequate liquidity and can cover my minimum monthly expenditures 100x over. My Long Term ratios continue to improve quite a bit. When I do start hammering away at my debt again these will become even better. I’m very happy I was able to save over 90% of my income again this month and having a positive rate of return is always nice. One issue has been that as my assets and equity grow, my returns on them fall. Staying above 10% is nothing short of a miracle for high net worth individuals so I’m enjoying it while I can. Soon I will need to increase my investments and/or start a small business to keep these ratios satisfactory.

Overall I’m very content with my progress. I’m boosting the cash I have in my primary savings account that backs up my checking account from $2k to $5k for the added security. Since that will happen this Friday when I get my next paycheck, I will then devote the rest of it to knocking my student loans below $5k. Once that’s complete (~2 months) I want to increase my asset allocation in PCH and FAX. PCH is a timber REIT that sells lumber in a sustainable manner and pays out 90% of profits in the form of dividends. FAX is an ETF that investments in government bonds from a number of Asian and Australian governments. If the dollar continues to fall versus other currencies as I expect, the coupon from these bonds will do very well.

• Consumer mood has drastically improved
• The nearly half of people rate the Economy as “poor”
• The same number of people rate the Economy as “excellent” from October 2008 till May 2009
• The number of people who say the Economy is “getting worse” has decreased by 30% since February
• Similarly, 30% more people say the Economy is “getting better”

Interestingly, optimism has been increasing with no discernible change in fundamental economic conditions.

• GDP fell 5.7% in the first quarter.
• Unemployment has climbed to a record 6.79 million.
• Oil prices are rising.
• Business activity is contracting at an increased pace.

How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?

-Alan Greenspan, December 5th, 1996

In honor of my new robotic companion, here is a time lapse photo of another Roomba’s movement while cleaning:

Photo Credit: DoobyBrain.com

While mulling this over, I came to a realization that my finances were almost entirely fixed. The variable parts are small at the moment (interest, buying coffee, etc). My paychecks are relatively fixed (though the making-work-pay act upped this by ~$20). My are all either fixed or easily controlled. Since I really don’t have any major variable inflows or outflows to make the math harder, I can easily predict my future position by looking at the change in my net worth by month.

A physics example might help (hopefully it won’t hurt). If I am riding my bike at about the same pace on a flat road and someone is measuring my position every 10 seconds or so, I’ll have very good information on my position over time. The air resistance isn’t going to change, gravity won’t pull harder or softer, small incline variations can be averaged out, and I should be pedaling at the same pace.  So if I know where I am now, and I know what my average increase is every 10 seconds (aka, my velocity) than I should have a very good idea of where I’ll be 10 seconds from now.

The first step is to test this, here is my Net Worth less Intangibles from March 2008 to April 2009:

Sure there are a few hills and valleys, but there is definitely a trend. Since Excel has a trend line feature, I went ahead and added that along with the trend line’s equation:

Now we’re getting somewhere! Sure I’m a little off from time to time, but that growth is damn near linear. The equation that Excel derived looks suspicious: y = 1,333.67 x – 15,957. Roughly speaking, this means that:

My Networth = (cash flow) * (number of months) + (Starting Net Worth)

The cash flow is my monthly income less outflow. Each latte I drink and every online survey I do for cash will change this, but the average indicates my lifestyle preferences. The number of months is based on March, 2008 being 1; April, 2008 is 2, etc. This will be useful for forecasting. My Starting Net Worth is slightly overstated but that’s probably what it was in February 2008 (month zero).

So if I wanted to predict how my net worth would look in December, 2009; the equation would be like so:

Projected December Net Worth = ($1,333.67) * (22) – $15,957

= $13,383.74

It looks like in 2009 I made a number of positive changes which will have a favorable impact. I can assume that my cash flow increase slightly (lower interest and dividends but with the making-work-pay). However My net worth in April, 2009 was quite a bit higher than the trend would have me believe ($2,000 higher). So my new equation will be:

2009 Net Worth = ($1,350) * (months) – $14,000

Projected December Net Worth = (1,350) * (22) – $14,000

= $15,700

Now that I know what path I’m on and where that leads, I can make more informed choices to determine where I want to go.

This year, that money buys more: more space, more special features, more yard, and a better school district. “You definitely get an extra bedroom and bath in almost every market,” says Corcoran.

A great article over at Yahoo Finance shows a few houses in different cities that are available now for $400,000. My personal favorite was the 12 room colonial in Maine:

This 12-room colonial two-story was built in 2005. The formal entry has cathedral ceilings and a view of the second story balcony. The family room with hardwood floors opens to the kitchen, living room, and “a very large deck,” says James “Jim” Stoneton, president of Coldwell Banker American Heritage Real Estate. A first-floor library could serve as a sixth bedroom. The kitchen, which opens to the deck, sports granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, an island, custom cherry cabinets and opens to the deck. The master suite bath includes granite countertops, a jetted tub, separate shower and a water closet.