The Taj Mahal Does Not Want Your US Dollars Anymore

Add Indian tourist sites to the list of places that won't accept dollars anymore. According to a recent ruling from the Indian Government, visitors will no longer be allowed to pay admission fees to places like the Taj Mahal in US Dollars. They must use Rupees instead. According to the BBC, "The ruling is aimed at safeguarding tourism revenues following the recent falls in the dollar."

The Taj Mahal joins the likes of model Gisele Bundchen and rapper Jay-Z as the latest object of public interest to snub the dollar.

Just tossing that out there.

By the way, im watching Bloomberg TV- Asian markets are open on Sunday nights in NYC. Did you know that the Pakistani government's 10-year bond is yielding 10.3% right now? I'm not sure how you could buy one of those and given the fact that the country is currently under emergency rule , I'm not sure you would want to buy one. How much do you trust a 10-year promise that Pakistan will pay you back? Actually, taking that a step further... why would you ever want to support such a government by loaning money to it?

Good Gifts for Finance Geeks Part 1 - Big Ticket Items

If you're shopping for an office worker, finance student, MBA, professor, or similar finance geek this holiday season, let me throw out a few suggestions. This first installment is going to be some more expensive gifts, and I'll follow with a list of cheaper items. My main criteria for these expensive gifts was that they had to be something a finance person would appreciate, and something that might be a collector's item or increase in value over time. I think I achieved this with everything except for the gold, which isn't super likely to increase in value substantially, but hey you never know.

1)Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor. As the link shows, you can get this book for about $1,400, used. That's right, a $1,400 used book. I'm not going to go into the details of the book here because I haven't read it. But any value investor would be extremely happy to get a copy of this book for more reasons than one- in addition to supposedly having some great investing advice, it's also a collectors item and an investment in its own right. In fact, according to Business week, this out-of-print book was going for $700 a copy just about a year ago. Read the article and find out why former hedge fund manager Seth Klarman's book is in such high demand.

2) A framed one thousand dollar bill. That's right, a legal tender $1,000 federal reserve note. These things were never meant for circulation so the federal reserve retires them whenever it comes across one... which as you can imagine isn't too often. This thousand will set you back somewhere around $4,000, but hey, isn't it worth it? Well maybe not, but this is a gift-giving time of year.

3) Gold Coins. At somewhere around $850 a coin, five or ten of these make a great gift for the finance geek who might be starting to get sick of regular paper money backed by government promises. I recommend BlanchardOnline.com, which has great prices and service.

4) One share of Google. This will cost you like $1300, but it could be a great long-term purchase for a finance geek to hang on the wall.

The 4-Hour Workweek

I finally got around to reading The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, by Timothy Ferriss. I have to say it was an interesting read. The basic premise of the book was that there is a class of "new rich" who can do what millionaires do without having a million dollars. They do this by automating their work so that they don't need to be present in order for their businesses to run, and by taking advantages of currency differences.

Ferriss seems to strongly advocate owning your own business, in particular some kind of an internet-based business. In my opinion, this isn't practical for most people. If you're considering doing this, the book might be even more valuable to you.

I did think he had a few interesting ideas though. For one, he has a pretty good chapter called "E is for Elimination" where he focused on streamlining your work life and time managment. None of it is really new stuff (the 80/20 principle etc...), but it will definitely make you think twice about the things you spend your time on, which is something we all need to do from time to time.

He also suggests going on a "one week media fast" where you don't read any newspapers, magazines, websites, or watch any news shows for a week. I think this has both its pros and cons. The main pro is that I think we all waste too much time reading news that we can't use and can spend the time doing more productive things. The cons are that for some jobs, especially more creative, higher-level business jobs, it's important to stay current on the happenings in your field and sometimes the media is the best source of information.

The chapter that intrigued me the most, and the one that really pushed me towards recommending this book, is "Outsourcing Life." In this he suggests getting a "remote personal assistant" from a company in India or elsewhere. He mentions Brickwork and Your Man In India as two potential companies to use. He says you can get a well qualified assistant to do some of your work for you, freeing up your time to do other things. Best of all- they can do it fairly inexpensively and they can work while you sleep. I actually tried this out with pretty good success, and I will hopefully write a post about that sometime in the future.

For now though, I'd say if you're the kind of person who's always looking to improve the way you work, and can overlook the rather drastic premise of this book, I think this is definitely worth spending some of your time (and a little of your money) on.

Final thought- can you achieve the four hour workweek by reading this book? I'd say the odds are very slim. I do think it might help you cut a few hours out of your work week though.

Congratulations to Young and Broke

Congratulations to Amanda at Young and Broke... her blog recently turned 2. I only link to blogs I read, and hers is a good one so check it out if you get a chance. She aims her posts mainly at younger people just out of college.

Education Stats from the Economist and Personal Finance Carnival

The Economist has an interesting chart comparing graduation rates for college students in different countries. I thought it was interesting that over 80% of young people in Australia entered school, with somewhere around 60% graduating. In the US, the number is something like 65% entering school and 35% graduating.

Also wanted to point out that one of my previous posts shows up in the carnival of personal finance over at The Tao Of Making Money, along with some other great posts to check out. I personally enjoyed this post at Ravi Vora's blog.

Stocks Killed Today

The market reached all time highs today. Most people cite strong retail sales.

I got to work at 7:15 am this morning. I got home at 8:30 pm. One of those days when it feels like all the salary in the world isn't worth it.

Postscript: by "killed" I mean they did well or "killed it." :)

How Long Should I Keep My Bank Statements?

I keep all of my files in labeled folders in one of those file box contraptions. If you have a job, you're in school, or you have some credit cards or similar accounts, I recommend getting yourself one of these to keep everything straight. I've had something like this for years now and i put all of my important papers in there. Right now I have folders for my car (title, bill of sale, maintenance records etc...), my wife's car, my auto insurance, my renter's insurance, my school records (transcripts etc...), a big file on my current job info, a smaller file with my previous job info (pay stubs, offer letters etc...), my last seven tax returns, my phone bill, my cable bill, my gas and electric bill, my wife's employment records, my retirement accounts, my bank accounts, and my investment account. Plus a few "misc" folders for random things. I also keep a big fat manilla envelope stuffed with reciepts for higher priced merchandise and manuals/warranty info.

I went to take the box out from under my desk the other day and realized that I could barely lift it. I realized that I needed to take two drastic steps. First, work out more, and second, clean out that box. I haven't been very good at getting rid of old stuff, so I reviewed Bankrate.com's list of what financial records to keep, and how long to keep them. I realized that I could shred a bunch of my old bank statements, phone bills, expired auto insurance policies and things like that, so I fired up one of my favorite machines, the Fellowes PowerShred I bought a few months ago and reviewed here.

By the way, this shredder is still cranking through papers like it's nobody's business. There are few things in life as satisfying as dropping a credit card offer (complete with immitation credit card inside) directly into the shredder without even bothering to open it.

So anyway, I spent a good half hour going through everything, and I ended up filling the entire seven gallon container with the shredded remains of my ageing and useless statements and financial records. February 2004 was a great period in my life, but I will never need my Chase WorkPlace Savings Account statement from back then ever again.

Yes it is good to keep records, but at a certain point it becomes overkill, and your March 2003 phone bill, while interesting, only makes it more difficult to get to the records you really need.

Keep those file boxes clean!

Catching Up - New Century Bankruptcy, Gina on American Idol, and Homebuilder Stock Values?

I finally got some breathing room at work.

In non-finance news, I can't believe Gina got voted off American Idol! What a crock. I considered her one of my top 3.

Not the biggest shocker in the world here, but New Century filed for bankruptcy. I kind of had a feeling they would about a month ago. Hope you found that liquidation analysis pretty interesting.

I've recently become pretty interested in homebuilding stocks. Take a look at a company like DR Horton Inc. (NYSE: DHI). Selling at book value, a trailing P/E of 6.61, and sporting a 10% ROA and 17% ROE. These stats are enough to make any value investor salivate. However, the prospects for the company and the industry as a whole are currently extremely uncertain. Are rising subprime mortgage defaults a short-term problem? Is housing in for a major correction?

Anyway, I think there is some value there, but I haven't taken a hard enough look at any of these companies yet. I have gotten some copies of their 10-Ks and plan on working my way through them. The big question in my mind is... are these companies going out of business? If so, then they aren't worth buying. If not, and you have a long term outlook, you could be looking at some great bargains. As Warren Buffett would have you do... be greedy when others are fearful (but be greedy in a sensible way).

Finally, Sanjaya, you don't deserve Gina's spot on the show.

The Beige Book

The Federal Reserve published its latest edition of the Beige Book today. I usually like to get a copy of it from the Federal Reserve Website, print it out, and read it on my way home from work. You can take the easy route and read some of the news coverage on Reuters, Bloomberg, or MarketWatch, or you can check out a copy yourself.

The Fed's description of the book is "Commonly known as the Beige Book, this report is published eight times per year. Each Federal Reserve Bank gathers anecdotal information on current economic conditions in its District through reports from Bank and Branch directors and interviews with key business contacts, economists, market experts, and other sources. The Beige Book summarizes this information by District and sector. An overall summary of the twelve district reports is prepared by a designated Federal Reserve Bank on a rotating basis."

I like how it's sort of an informal "ear to the ground" survey of different parts of the country. In particular, I think it's a good way to follow things like employment and housing.

I havent read today's version yet, but I just wanted to point it out as a good information source. As Peter Lynch might say, it's one of my "bedside thrillers."

How To Get A Good Night's Sleep

If you're like me, one of the things that really brings you down at work is a lack of sleep. I really have trouble getting to sleeep some nights, with the result being an extremely tired morning the next morning, and a difficult day at work.

I think the root of my problem is the weekend/weekday differential. What I mean by this is I typically try to get into bed around 10 during the week. Sometimes this goes later, and very rarely does it go any earlier. In fact I would say the median time I'm asleep is 11:30pm, and I wake up at 6am for a total of about six and a half hours of sleep, which never feels like enough. On the weekends however, I tend to stay up late, usually till 2am, and I end up sleeping in (when I can) to 10 or 11 in the morning.

This screws up my biological clock. Come Sunday night, I'm not tired enough to go to bed early. I could go to bed at 10 and just lay there for like five hours wide awake. This messes me up for a few days, I end up missing out on sleep, and when the next weekend comes around, I do it all again.

I looked around the Internet for some advice on how to get a better night's sleep, and I stumbled upon a fellow by the name of Dr. William Dement at Stanford, who is the author of this page full of good sleep tips.


Some of the other tips include:

• "If you can't fall asleep within 20 minutes, get up and do something boring until you feel sleepy"
• "Have a light snack before bed" - an empty stomach or one that is too full can interfere with sleep
• Use sunlight to set your biological clock - he recommends getting up and turning your face towards the sun for 15 minutes every morning to let your body know it is time to wake up

Any other tips on getting a good night's sleep? While it isn't particularly personal finance related, I think that sleep is one of the most basic prerequisites to anything you do.

The Best Place To Find a Notary

I have never used a notary before in my life, but I need one in order to roll over my old 401(k) plan into my new employer's plan. I thought this would be a huge hassle, but turns out it is only a small hassle. I just called my local Chase bank branch and they have a notary on duty today (Saturday). What great customer service!

Some guy on CraigsList wanted $50 to come and notarize something. I did some poking around and the most you can legally charge to notarize a signature in New York is $2. He must be claiming the $48 is his travel fee!

The point is, your first stop for notary services should be your bank's local branches. If you are paying someone to notarize something for you, look into what your state law says is the maximum fee they can charge.

Postscript: I just got back from Chase, and it was an extremely easy process. They were able to witness my wife's signature, notarize my document, and get me out of there in about 15 minutes. Now all I have to do is make some copies of the signed documentation, send it to the old employer's plan, and they will send me back a check for the amount in my 401(k). I will send this check to my new employer's plan along with instructions for where to invest the money (I am going to distribute it according to the same percentages I use for making my weekly contributions), and they will put it into my account for me. The result? One less account to worry about!