Most money advisers will tell you, when investing, to go long and go long term. Here, long & long term mean two different things.

Going “long” is the easiest understood of investment strategies and that is to buy the item cheaply and sell it expensively.

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With this post I kick off a category on investing. First off, investing should be a part of every savings plan.

First, let me warn you, I am an information technology professional not a money manager or any such thing. I am giving suggestions for you to further investigate not to act on willy-nilly. Do not take any of these investment strategies/instruments lightly! You can lose serious amounts of money to ignorance on your part, the market itself, or unscrupulous third parties.

The cardinal rule is to not invest more than you can afford to lose. That means you need to invest out of savings not out of your emergency funds or the money you use to make your mortgage payments.
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This post is an ad-hoc posting in response to Gather Little By Little and his contemplation of home heating. To sum up, he has moved to a new house that is heated by mainly electricity with a propane fired fireplace. His utility bill came out to be what I consider a very shocking amount and wonders what he can do to alleviate his high cost of heating.

I provided a response in the comments of his blog, but the comments did not allow for formatting on my part and more bonkingly, I took electricity as his most expensive option when in fact it is the middle of the road option.

So here goes again, I am hoping he reads this.
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A review of my goals from last year on its way and another post on this year’s goals!

It depends on a number of factors; however, the most important two are the cost of your main heating and the cost at which you can buy firewood. Don’t assume having wood fires is automatically more inexpensive. It is like the discovery I made that E85 is more expensive than E0 or E10 gasoline.
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