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Last year I put my Roth contribution in a Fidelity sector fund concentrating on banking and investing (Fidelity Select Financial, FIDSX). It did pretty well and after it went up 20% I exchanged it for a high-yield bond fund in September (FAGIX). I wanted something more conservative than equities which had gone up a good bit, and it seemed like there was still a lot of turmoil ahead relating to the fiscal cliff. However, I think FIDSX ended up a little ahead of where I sold it.

For 2013, I realized that I could put the entire contribution in an existing Roth fund I already have, Vanguard’s Small Cap Value (VISVX), and that would get that balance up high enough to upgrade to Vanguard’s “Admiral shares” which have a lower expense ratio. It isn’t a huge difference, 0.24% for VISVX and 0.10% for the admiral shares (VSIAX), but why not? It’s half the cost.

To fund it, I figured I would sell some emerging market shares (VEMAX) I have that have gone up 20% since I bought them and then buy the rest of the $5,500 maximum allowable contribution with some short-term bond fund shares.

Not real exciting, but I do think small caps will continue to do well this upcoming year. Now that I’ve paid off my mortgage, I also went ahead and maxed out my deferred compensation contributions for 2013 and opened a 401k, which seems like double-dipping, but you are allowed to do both. I may have bit off too much by adding the 401k, but I can reduce it later.

For the last fifteen years, I have been a one television family. That’s plenty for me, and the TV I have is enormous. But lately I got an elliptical trainer, and instead of sitting on my sofa watching The Daily Show and NBC News every night, I could be exercising. As it is, I am always looking for something to keep me entertained (distracted) while I am exercising and so far have been working through episodes of The West Wing, watching them on my computer screen, which is in the same room as the elliptical. But that’s just more TV to watch, so it would be good if I could combine exercise with TV I’m going to watch anyway. While I record shows on my Dish Network 722k VIP DVR, there is no way to copy those to the computer, so I have been thinking maybe I could get another TV. Prices on HDTV’s have come way, way down. This Christmas I have seen 51-inch TV’s for $400 and a 24-inch TV for $150. I was at Fry’s this past week getting a new hard drive and some anti-virus software and looked around at their TV’s. It seemed like most of the smaller ones (30 inches and less) were 720p instead of the higher resolution 1080p, but the 24-inch one on sale is 1080p (however the $400 51-inch TV was 720p, probably one reason it was so cheap).

Continue reading “Two TV’s”

For Christmas, Mom gave me a Mr. Beer homebrew kit. I had noticed these in a couple of advertisements and was a little intrigued, so it was a good idea for a gift. I have thought it would be neat to make my own beer, but you can buy pretty good beer in the store, plus the equipment and ingredients are expensive because you can’t just go to the grocery store and buy hops and malting barley. You end up going to a specialty store which means it will be expensive. Plus most beer-making equipment has you make 5 gallons at a time and I probably don’t drink 5 gallons of beer in a year.
Continue reading “Mr. Beer”

Recently, I bought a 500GB Buffalo Stealth portable hard drive, and then quickly tore into it to extract the actual drive. Then I was able to successfully copy over my notebook computer’s files and upgrade the notebook’s hard drive. Afterwards I put the notebook’s original 250GB hard drive back in the Buffalo case (though I haven’t reformatted it yet, so it isn’t real useful; but I’m thinking now it would be safe to reformat).

But my old desktop’s hard drive is still pretty full. Fry’s had a special on a 1 TB Western Digital external drive (“external” or “desktop” drives have 3.5-inch desktop size hard drives in them and are usually powered from the wall, while “portable” drives usually have a notebook-size drive in them and are powered by USB; really both types are external as well as portable) for only $58. The nice thing about an external drive is that I can use it to extend my Dish Network DVR (up to 2 TB drives will work, but they have to have their own power source). However, the desktop’s drive is only 160 GB, which doesn’t add much capacity to the 500 GB DVR and isn’t all that useful as an external drive either.
Continue reading “Another Hard Drive Upgrade”

Starting next year, the sun will supply about a third of the power used by my house. I have always liked the idea of installing solar panels on the roof and making my own power. I looked for a while at installing a solar water heater, but the water heater system was going to cost thousands of dollars for the panels, pump, heat exchanger, and a plus-size water tank, which would never allow me to recoup the investment since my hot water bill is only about $10 a month. There is a house in the neighborhood with solar panels for power. I looked into that too and I have a south-facing piece of roof that would be good for soaking up the rays. But again, it’s not just the expensive panels to buy and install, but then you have to have voltage regulators that will turn the power into AC and send excess power back to the grid while letting the grid supply power when the sun isn’t shining or demand exceeds the solar supply. Even if I divide the installation costs over a long period and I include federal grants that cover 30% of installation, I don’t think I could ever make a system economical.
Continue reading “Solar Powered House”