Please direct all comments to the new official site for the Thesis Sharp Skin.

If you haven’t yet seen my Thesis skins, check out the screen shot below or visit the Skins site to see them in action. You can also see the Wufoo Red skin in action over at Kate’s Organic Rainforest Camu Blend by Amazon Herb site at ZamuLifeForce.com

I keep seeing more and more authors of other personal finance and internet marketing blogs tweeting on twitter, I figured I might as well check it out and see what all the fuss is about. So now I am officially on twitter. I don’t know exactly what I am doing yet, but I’m sure I will get the hang of it.

Stay tuned for future posts on twitter and in the mean time, follow me on twitter to see what I’m up too!

I’ll write more about my reasons for the redesign and how easy it was to do with Thesis later. For now, I’m just going to introduce you to the new site as it looks today. Any feedback is appreciated!

Now that 2009 has come, I’m ready to jump back into writing about more personal finance and online entrepreneurship topics. I know I’ve got to manage my time better and avoid taking on too much work at any one time so that there is some time to devote to the projects I enjoy, this blog for example.

Anyway, I’ve got a lot of good ideas on topics to share so if learning how to make and keep more of your money is something that interests you, check back from time to time to see what’s up!

However, it was hard not to pay attention today when Lehman Brothers announced they were filing bankruptcy. This is the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history even surpassing that of Worldcom & Enron and spells the end of 150+ year old company. Other major news of the day was that Bank of America was acquiring Merrill Lynch and that AIG was also in major financial trouble. The result of all this bad news was a 500 point drop in the DOW, the largest since the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.

I’ve been browsing my favorite financial sites this evening trying to learn more about what happened to Lehman Brothers today and why. I know of course that we are in the midst of a credit crisis and a lot of financial institutions got themselves into trouble by taking on too much sub prime related securities and that a lot of them were searching for extra capital but what exactly caused Lehman Brothers to go down today?

I wanted to share one article I found titled “The End of Wallstreet” from CNN Money that gave me a better picture of why Lehman Brothers went belly up. The article goes on to predict what will happen to Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, the two remaining Wall Street investment banks. Its a good read so if your searching for some information on what went down today, you may want to check it out.

The single most important thing has always been and remains content. If you publish quality content, people who share your interests will eventually find you. The next thing that seem to recurring on successful blogs, was top-notch design and presentation. A professionally designed blog does a lot for your credibility and if you are using a theme that automatically optimizes your content for Search Engines, those interested parties will only find you faster.

That brings me to the topic of today’s post. Chris Pearson over at DIYThemes just released the third major update to his popular Thesis Wordpress Theme. The Thesis theme is the theme I chose to use here on SeekingFF.com and it offers unparalleled design options for its users without any of the difficult coding that is usually associated with building a professional looking blog. The best thing about Thesis is that it automatically optimizes your content for the search engines. Chris also had the foresight to add a support forum for the theme so if you need help, you can get it from him or one of the other 1500+ thesis users active in the forum.

If you’ve been reading this blog thus far, you already know that one of the things I write about is how you can use the internet to make extra money and that process starts with building a website that you can later monetize. The Thesis Theme is one tool you can use to do that. So if you haven’t yet checked it out, browse on over to the DIYThemes and see what Thesis can do for you and your blog and stay tuned to SeekingFF.com for more information on how to build and monetize a website that will pay recurring dividends as you travel down to the road to financial freedom.

I am a week late getting the August 2008 Month in Review out due to a week vacation at the end of July and a family reunion this past weekend but anyway, here it is.

August marked the second month that SeekingFF has been out and I think we covered some important topics that needed to be covered as this blog continues to grow. So just in case you missed them the first time around, here’s a quick recap of what was discussed on SeekingFF this month.

Personal Finance Topics

Several simple things you can do that will save and make you more money.

My Thoughts on Life Insurance: A summary of the different kinds of life insurance, how to determine how much you need, and what type of insurance you should own to make sure you are getting the most for your money.

$25 Sign up Bonus for Joining Me on Prosper: How you can get an instant $25 for joining me on Prosper, the Person-to-Person lending network. You may want to also check out my Prosper Review from last month to find out more about Prosper and how you can earn a relatively safe 8% - 12% on your idle money.

The Importance of an Emergency Fund: Why you need one and how much you should set aside. I consider a properly funded emergency fund the foundation of my financial plan so this post is definately worth reading!

Frugal Living - Taking Advantage of Local Parks: An inexpensive and fun way to entertain yourself for a weekend. Find out what I did at a local Indiana State Park and how little I spent.

Investing Ideas for Beginners: Ready to start investing but unsure of what to invest in? This post talks about the power of passive investing recommended by many financial gurus (including the founder of one of the largest mutual fund familys) and is a must read for beginners and those who have been investing for years alike.

Online Entrepreneurship Topics

Information and tools you can use to start building a profitable online business.

ShareThis for your Website: Increase awareness and traffic for your blog or website by allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others via social media sites and email.

RSS in Simple English: A quick recap of what RSS is and a nice video by the folks over at CommonCraft that explains it quite well.

Turn Random Visitors into Daily Readers: A few things you can do to keep random visitors to your blog coming back again and again ultimately increasing the revenues generated by your site.

Do Online Surveys Really Pay? A post explaining the pitfalls of most online survey programs and one survey program you can use that actually pays.

Did you miss some of these posts? Just check out the August 2008 Archives to see a chronological listing of everything that was posted this month.

Stay tuned in September for more information on how you can save and make more money and continue to take steps towards achieving financial freedom!

Questions / Comments / Suggestions for the future months?

Simply leave a comment and I’d be happy to talk with you.

Starting out, picking the right investments can seem overwhelming. There are just so many choices out there, stocks, mutual funds, exchange traded funds (ETFs), etc., etc.

This blog isn’t going to tell you specific investments to put your money in, but I can give you some general guidance on where to start. First of all, let me share my investing strategy with you.

I’ve read a lot of books on investing and a common view of many authors and one that I also subscribe to is that, the average investor cannot beat the stock market long term.

There are few that can. So while I do have some play money in my Zecco (read my Zecco review) account where I do pick individual stocks and try to beat the market, the bulk of my holdings are in passive index funds.

Passive Investing with Index Funds

An index fund is a fund that that tracks a specific stock index, the S&P 500, for example. Index funds are passive investments because they simply track the index and do not frequently buy and sell other securities. An S&P 500 index fund for example simply holds stock in the 500 largest publicly traded companies in America. Therefore these funds do not try to beat the market, they simply mimic the market and because these funds are not actively managed, they have a lot lower expense ratio and generally carry no sales charge. Research proves that the majority of actively managed mutual funds do not beat the market long term so for most of us who are investing for the long term, a simple passive index fund is a great way to start. If you just buy and hold and periodically invest more when you can, a good index fund should serve you well.

Passive Investing with Target Retirement Funds

Target date retirement funds are relatively new investment vehicle. With one of these funds you select a date at which you plan to retire and as that date approaches the fund automatically becomes more and more conservative. So if your 30 now and plan to retire at 65 you could pick a fund like the Vanguard Target Retirement 2045. This fund holds mainly stocks now but as 2045 approaches, it will switch to more conservative, income oriented investments, like bonds and money market funds. These funds are nice because they don’t require you to do anything like reallocate your portfolio or worry if your money is in the appropriate place. You simply buy into the fund and keep investing over the years.

Good Passive Investment Funds

I’m not going to tell you specifically which funds to invest in. Everyone is different and you should factor in your age, your risk tolerance, and what you want to gain through your investments. I am going to point out a couple good, investor friendly, fund familys that you may want to consider.

Vanguard
Vanguard pioneered passive investing with their Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund (VFINX) back in 1976 and they continue to have a wide selection of index and target retirement funds available. I personally hold all my mutual funds with Vanguard. Vanguard does require a minimum investment of $3,000 per fund so if you don’t have quite that much stashed away, you could consider a fund from TIAA-CREF or T. Rowe Price. Although Vanguard may have some higher fees in the beginning, I believe that over the long run their low expenses and indexing-expertise will result in superior performance. This is a company that I can see sticking with for the next 50+ years.

TIAA-CREF or T. Rowe Price
If you don’t have much to start with but are willing to set aside $50 every month to invest automatically, you can open an account with TIAA-CREF or T. Rowe Price. Both seem to be solid companies with good customer service. If you’re in your 20s - 30s, you can check out the T. Rowe Price Retirement 2045 fund (TRRKX) or TIAA-CREF Lifecycle 2040 (TCLOX).

Summary

Most of us and most professional fund managers simply cannot beat the stock market year in and year out. So instead of trying to and paying high expenses on actively managed funds or stock commissions, a better alternative is to put your investing on autopilot and just buy and hold a boring passively managed index or target retirement fund. For more reading on the advantages of passive investing, I highly recommend The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns by Vanguard founder John Boggle.