I made the local news!

My local paper ran a story about this trip! I am quoted as saying that ""I know what a big hot Southern city on the Mississippi is like." My family has lived in Memphis for a couple of decades, but as much as I might be familiar with heat like we worked in today, or southern cooking and living next to the Mississippi, I know very little about New Orleans or about a city as wounded as this one, as I learn more and more each day. money

Here are a couple of 'houses' on the same streets as the homes we are building. money


The same news article quotes: "A lot of neighborhoods are still devastated," said Habitat for Humanity spokesman Aleis Tusa.. "It's strange to think two years later we have people living in FEMA trailers." money

Strange to think, but true. money

Day one with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans

We got up early in the morning and took a cab over to the Musicians' Village site. The project managers gave a safety talk and then tried to figure out which way to send us. There were several hundred volunteers and it was turning into the hottest day of the year so far (they told us) and they had an event planned for later in the day so I'm not sure they were as coordinated as usual. money


Truth is, there was plenty of work to do in both directions! money

Some sites are just getting foundations: money


Other houses are almost done: money


We spent most of the day moving supplies from around the homes near completion to the site just breaking ground. money

In the afternoon, the first wall was raised on the 41st home in the project! money

We Made it!

We took off from Boston the morning and made it to New Orleans early afternoon. We walked around the city a bit after we checked in to our hotel. More than one building, even in the French Quarter is in rough shape, but signs of construction are evident as well. Here is the view up a debris chute: money


Buskers were doing their thing: money



And sometimes, the passers by joined in!


We walked down Bourbon street on our way to get groceries for lunch tomorrow: money


I'm off to sleep as we are getting up early to head to the Musicians' Village and see what our work for the week will be! money

The entire team is contributing to a blog and some of these posts will appear there as well. money

Heading to New Orleans!

I mentioned before that I am am going to New Orleans for a week with a group of my colleagues from Berklee College of Music to work with Habitat for Humanity on the Brandford Marsalis and Harry Connick, Jr. inspired project to build a Musician's Village in the Upper 9th Ward. money

Well I'm packing today and off tomorrow morning. money

It has been a busy week as I have been preparing so I have mostly ignored the rollercoaster ride the portfolios I have been tracking on this site have taken over the last few days. I intend to continue to ignore the markets for a while longer and focus on this amazing opportunity. Part of the reason, my investing strategy is to (hypothetically) invest in a diverse group of mutual funds and setup a system of for continuous investing, is so I can ignore it when I need or want to and this is one of those times! Following the progress of individual stocks or companies requires much more continuous attention to news about those holdings as things can change pretty fast. If I had the time, inclination, or hypothetical finances I think I would need to follow such a strategy, I might give it a try. But I don't. money

I was interviewed about my upcoming trip to New Orleans by my local paper this week and will link to the story when they run it. money

Also, the eight of us going will be contributing to a blog about our experience and I will add the link to that here when we are ready to roll it out. money

More about the trip soon!

What the heck is Janus Contrarian?

When I noted the market was tanking today, I decided to make my hypothetical investment for June in the second fund of the "WylieMoney Slowly" portfolio. In this portfolio I am adding one of the 20 funds I researched each month, starting in May 2007. money

The second fund I originally chose was a Global Equity fund: MDISX. money

Well according to Etrade, this fund is closed to new investors:

But according to Morningstar, this fund is not closed and is available through Etrade: money

Regardless of whether this is a mistake on Etrade's site or not, getting someone to help you is not worth the effort. money

So I decided to pick my original runner up, Janus Contrarian JSVAX. This brings me to the title for this post. money

Back in November of 2006, it was open to new investors and it was categorized as World Stock or Global Equity. But tonight, as I look it up, it is not. Morningstar lists it as Large Blend which means it invests primarily in Large Cap American companies. money

Morningstar also shows that it is a Large Cap Growth fund. Note the red dot.


But more curious to me is the allocation of 37.8% in non-American companies!


Why does this matter? Well funds are compared to their peers. So if your peers are domestic funds and you have been gaining profits from surging international markets, you are going to look great compared to your peers:


But if your peers are World Funds which invest in stocks all over the world, you are not likely to look as stellar:


Well MDISX is 70% invested in international companies so it certainly has more of an international focus now than JSVAX but JSVAX has a 39% turnover ratio so who knows what it looked like last December, much less what it will look like in 6 months. money

Regardless, I'm calling it a Global Equity fund and I added it to the WylieMoney slowly portfolio tonight as of today's closing price. money

Ummm Etrade... anybody there?

I went in to Etrade's Boston branch with a customer service question on May 25th, 2007. money

Mutual Funds allow different amounts for "Additional Minimum Investments" and "Additional AIP Minimum Investments." Morningstar.com lists these differences and lists Etrade as a provider for which these minimums apply. money

I tried to set up an AIP for SSEMX through Etrade's website and was told the minimum I needed to invest in the AIP was $1000, not the $100 listed on Morningstar's site. I called Etrade and was told that as soon as I paid the additional $1000 on top of the $2500 I already invested when I first bought the fund, THEN I would be able to lower the AIP to $100. money

I then did research and other funds I own did not charge me an additinonal "Initial AIP Minimum", if I already owned the fund so what I was told was not consistently true in the interface. money

So like I said, I went to the Branch office on 5/25/07 and explained the issue to a representative who understood, agreed that the answer I got over the phone was not consistent with what we saw in the interface and forwarded the question to people people who would be able to figure out what is going on. money

I have yet to get a follow up. money

I called the Boston Branch phone number a couple of times but have yet to reach a person. Today I left a message. Then I called Etrade's main customer service line and got a customer service rep who looked up the extension of the person I spoke with at the downtown Boston branch and gave it to me and I called that number and left a message. money

Please call me and let me know the answer to my question- Why can't I set up an AIP plan using my funds "Additional AIP Minimum" amount of $100? money

FYI- the AIP page on Etrade's site says "Automatic investments require a minimum investment of $100 or the fund minimum, whichever is greater." money

Lazy Portfolio continues to catch up

With today's nice sell off, the Lazy portfolio made up more ground, but the WylieMoney portfolio held on to its tenuous lead with a 1.98% increase since I invested on May 1st. money

I have added a summary over on the right which I will update going forward. money

Today is the day I am adding fund #2

Today is the day I am adding fund #2 to the WylieMoney Slowly portfolio. Sadly, fund number 2, MDISX has closed to new investors through Etrade. It does not appear to have closed to new investors in general and Morningstar shows it available through Etrade, but you can't buy into it through their interface so I am adding a different fund (JSVAX). I'll explain more later tonight. money

A chart for Ian

Ian gave me grief about a lack of charts so here you go. So far, everything is tracking pretty close together so the chart is not terribly informative. I did try to make it pretty...

Managed Mutual Funds, Index funds and ETFs...

...are going every which way these days. Since I first invested, the WylieMoney portfolio wins. Year to date, the Vanguard portfolio is ahead. And today, ETFs did the best. I will invest in fund #2 sometime this month when the time is right. money


I am still waiting on a response from Etrade and will try and follow up tomorrow at lunch.

I'm also switching my employer sponsored retirement plan from one of our two options to the other. I'll explain why soon. money

Finally, I leave for New Orleans this weekend and plan to write about the trip here! money

Golden Gate National Recreational Area

A reader known as Sir Ack wrote in and asked about my Bunker picture and pointed out that it did not look like something you would find in Golden Gate Park. He was right and right to guess that I meant Golden Gate National Recreational Area! Thanks for pointing out my mistake! MONEY

I think this is where the bunker is, but if anybody has more info, please let me know: MONEY

Terms of Use

Yodlee hooks up with Zillow!

I have talked about Yodlee before. Let me re-iterate that this totally free service is amazing. I use it to keep track of over 20 accounts! MONEY

Now you are probably thinking that 20 accounts is a few too many, and I can understand that. But when you start to count each account you have, checking, savings, visa, discover card, Roth IRA, 401(k)/403(b), and then double that if you are married, you get up there pretty quick. When I bought my hybrid, I opened several credit cards with 0% balance transfers to get 0% financing over an extended period of time. So on and so forth. With a tool as nice as yodlee.com, why bother closing accounts? MONEY

So I have my mortgage set up in yodlee, and pay my bill each month there. But I had to create a custom entry and enter the estimated value of my home as a manual account to get a realistic picture of my finances overall. Until this week that is. MONEY

I was browsing around one night and saw a link called "Real Estate Center." I clicked it and there was an option to set up my address in a tool that automatically goes to zillow.com and grabs the estimate. If you own a home or are shopping for a home and have not checked out Zillow, you should. It complies local sales information and tabulates home values and contains tons of tons of great information on top of a really neat interface that uses google maps and microsoft's visual earth. MONEY

And like yodlee, zillow is free. MONEY

So now Yodlee goes out and grabs my account values as well as my home's estimated value and pulls all the info together and provides charts and graphs of changes in value, spending, and now equity in my home = zillow estimate - mortgage! MONEY

WylieMoney Portfolio continues to slide

Close call, but the Vanguard funds beat my picks by .02% today. My funds are still ahead since my 'purchase,' but year to date they are tied. ETFs continue to fall behind. MONEY

Mostly Managed Portfolio Loses Ground...

...but still remains in the lead! MONEY

First of all, last week I went to Etrade's office in downtown Boston and explained my issue to Justin, who forwarded it to the 'Mutual Fund Department' with a link to this site. So if you are here looking for the details of my issue, click here or on the link in the upper right corner. Basically your site is not allowing me to set up an AIP plan with the additional minimum for AIP plans for the fund SSEMX which is $100. MONEY

On to the competition! MONEY

As of today, the WylieMoney portfolio is still ahead, but not by much. I think today's slight under performance is due to some dabbling of a few of my fund managers in emerging markets which did poorly before American markets caught fire. The year to date totals for WylieMoney and Lazy are remarkably close. I wonder how long that will last. MONEY

Anyway, I made a little chart of the the random dates that I have managed to document the total value of the accounts. This does not represent day to day performance as I only have totals from 8 days over the last month, but once I have several months of data, the graph should be loosely indicative of trends. MONEY

Etrade, don't do this to me!

Arrrrggghhhh. MONEY

On this site I have put together a pretty detailed hypothetical portfolio available for purchase through Etrade. I have not gone into great detail about if I would actually buy these funds if I could or if I own any of them. MONEY

I do own some of them but I do not own all of them. Some of the categories I researched here, are categories for which I already own a Mutual Fund that I bought years ago. Even though the fund I picked for this hypothetical portfolio might look a little better than the fund I own, it is not worth it to me to sell my fund and pay the capital gains tax and then invest the leftover money in a new fund, at this point in time. Also I do not own funds for each of these 20 specific categories. MONEY

One of the funds I do own is SSGA Emerging Markets SSEMX. I bought it back in May of 2006. I have also managed to save enough to add $100 to my initial investment at a couple of points since then (not every month though!). Since I bought it, my holdings in this fund have increased 27.46%! Not bad for one year. MONEY

This is a risky fund and that risk has been well rewarded over the short term. I imagine it is only a matter of time before Putin does something so un-democratic that western investors balk and sell Gazprom in droves or China's speculators finally try and jump ship or Chavez convinces the rest of South America to 'reclaim' their private businesses. I do not know what it will be, but something will send emerging markets into a downturn. MONEY

In fact, yesterday, SSEMX was my second biggest loser down -2.03%. My biggest loser, if you're curious, was PNRZX. If you click that link, you'll see that PNRZX has been on fire over the last 5 years. I personally have only gained 10.30% since buying in just over a year ago. Not too bad, but not great given the recent gains I missed out on. My only fund that increased in value yesterday was BTTRX, a WylieMoney pick, up 0.14% on the day. MONEY

Even though I do not think it necessarily the best time to buy an emerging market fund specifically, I did try and add another $100 to my holding several days ago and was denied.

The entire reason I bought this specific fund and recommended each of the WylieMoney funds over sometimes better funds in each category is the $100 minimum for additional investments. I am still trying to figure out what happened here, but the last time I added $100 to this fund was in February. Now the minimum that Etrade is letting me add to my holding is $1000. So something changed in the last few months. Despite trying to save and invest as much as I can, I cannot afford to add $1000. And I should not have to darn it! Here is what Morningstar claims the fund allows: MONEY


What I suspect happened was that SSEMX changed its 'Additional Minimum Investment' to $1000 recently. You can see above it is $1000 now- I do not remember if it was that way before February. Fine. Gone are the days I can add $100 whenever I have the $100 to add and think the timing is right. I am willing to set up the Automatic Investment Plan or AIP for this. The Additional AIP minimum is listed as $100. MONEY

Etrade allows you to set up an AIP that invests in a few different intervals: MONEY


If I can come up with $400 a year to add to this fund, I could choose the "Quarterly" option and be all set, right? Not so fast! Here is a picture of the option I get when trying to set up the additional AIP investments: MONEY


So I called Etrade and here is what they tell me. Despite the fact that I already paid at least an initial $1000 when I first invested, to set up an AIP now, I have to pay another $1000 before I can reduce the AIP investments to $100. Since you can start and stop an AIP at anytime, this leaves me wondering if I should not have just bought the fund through this screen and set it up with an AIP plan for once a year that I never intended to make on that schedule and then just adjusted the frequency and amounts as desired. MONEY

But this does not make sense. I should not have to pay different amounts based on which screen I used to buy the fund. Does this make sense to anyone else? Do all brokerages and funds that have different minimums for AIPs and and non-AIP subsequent purchases make you pay a separate 'Initial Investment Amount' to both buy the fund initially and then set up the AIP as well? MONEY

This is not what is going on at Etrade either, at least not consistently. Another WylieMoney recommended fund I own is American Beacon Large Cap Value Planahead AAGPX. Here are the details for this fund from Morningstar:



So to set up an AIP to automatically invest $50, I should have to first pay another $2500. But I don't. Here is my option in the drop down menu: MONEY


I'm going to try approaching Etrade again and see if I can find out more. MONEY

Habitat for Humanity Project to Build a Musician's Village in New Orleans!

Berklee College of Music is sponsoring a group of employees to go to New Orleans and work with Habitat for Humanity on a project to build a Musician's Village in the Upper 9th Ward!

How cool is that?

Harry Connick, Jr., Branford and Ellis Marsalis came up with the idea to build 70 homes and a Music Center.

Many of my colleagues applied for this sponsorship I was fortunate enough to be one of the ones chosen! Yesterday, I met the other 7 people who are going and I am excited! We head down in June and will be there for a week.

Mostly Managed vs 'Lazy' Vanguard Index funds

I promised weekly updates and failed. I'll try and come up with a good system I can keep on top of.

My negligence is not due to shame from the WylieMoney portfolio lagging behind. Far from it. Not only is the Wylie portfolio ahead since I 'hypothetically invested' in it, it has pulled ahead of the lazy portfolio year-to-date as well. Also, I realized that the reason the ETF portfolio appeared to be ahead of all the portfolios was that a few of the options, including two of the Bond funds, have not existed for a year and were being left out of the calculation so I am leaving out the ETF YTD number.

I included today's performance as well. The one-fund WylieMoney Slowly 'portfolio' is way ahead both year to date and since I 'invested' but note that its loss today is over twice that of the more balanced portfolios. And when I add the second fund in June, a Global Equity fund, I do not anticipate it will settle down...

Here are the details of each Portfolio. Click the image for a larger view:

WylieMoney

WylieMoney Slowly

ETFs

Lazy

P