My strategy, simply, is to invest in what I know and stick with the basic fundamentals of investing in the stock market. For example, anyone who has been trolling around my network of websites for a while knows that I know a little something about professional wrestling. I’ve been keeping an eye on WWE’s stock performance for years. My study has shown me that the stock, generally, is cyclical around WrestleMania. In other words, the stock usually goes up a little bit around that time of the year and then falls after the show and its hype go away. With that in mind, I bought a bunch of WWE when it was in its lull and then waiting for WrestleMania time to sell. Easy enough, right?

But my strategy hasn’t really been the traditional “buy low, sell high,” rather it has been to take a reasonable amount of risk on those companies which are showing some resilience in the current market like Ford. In December when Ford went to Congress with hat in hand saying that it needed more funds, I wouldn’t invest in the company. But as soon as they came out with projections that showed they could sustain their business without a bailout I put a bunch of money into their stock. The total of my investments in Ford are up 157% as of this writing (and the stock is even down when this post is being written).

I did the same thing with Sirius XM. I know what their product is and enough about their financials to know that this company could be a real threat once it clears up its debt obligations so I invested a ton of money in the stock when it was trading at 14 and 16 cents. The stock now routinely trades in the 40 to 50 cent range and I expect it to trade even higher in the coming months and years. Not a bad deal overall, huh?

But I’m also investing in companies like Barnes & Noble. The difference with Barnes & Noble and the other companies is that I’m not looking so much for an increase in the stock price with this company, but rather I’m looking to acquire their stocks so I can enjoy their quarterly dividend (which, last time around, was a quarter per share). Earning 25% on your investment each quarter is nothing to scoff at – I’ll take it.

I guess the other difference between me and the stereotypical investor is that I’m not dropping huge gobs of money into the market. Where most people think that the typical investor is putting in tens of thousands of dollars, I’m content putting in just a few hundred every few weeks (which has now built me up to a few thousand overall).

I always keep in mind, though, what else I might use that money for instead of investing. For example, if I’m buying $100 worth of Barnes & Noble I might have otherwise used that money for a night out at the bar or a night down in Atlantic City. In the long run, putting the money in the market is a much smarter decision. At least I think so.

This isn’t a suggestion for everyone out there to jump into the market, but I would encourage everyone to give it some thought. If you would otherwise blow the money on useless stuff, then why not?

There is a national organization called the Project on Student Debt who is really the leader in this field. They’ve helped advocate for so many beneficial new programs for student loan borrowers, not the least of which is the new public service forgiveness program that will help thousands of high debt graduates. One of the initiatives that they publicly advocate for on their website is the possibility of making student loan interest a federal tax credit as opposed to an income tax deduction; coupled with this is increasing the amount that could be credited from the current $2,500 to up to $4,000.

I recently asked the good folks over at the Project on Student Debt for an update on this initiative and this is their reply:

I’m not aware of any major progress on this. Congress is pretty focused on the budget process right now, which includes a different tax credit (for tuition). We’ll keep our email subscribers updated if anything changes, but right now I’m not aware of a legislative vehicle in the works that could move this forward in the short-term.

First and foremost, if you are interested in getting updates on student loan legislation, I encourage you to sign-up for their e-mail list (which you can do by clicking here). Second, it is a real shame that the federal tax credit for student loan interest has no champion in the Congress right now. This could be a crucial piece of legislation that has the potential to ease some of the burden that many high debt student loan borrowers are faced with due to their education.

If this initiative ever gained steam and passed Congress, it would save many high debt student loan borrowers (*cough* like me *cough*) a great deal of money in the long-term. Personally, I’d like to see the total amount of student loan interest that could be credited increased to a higher dollar amount like $10,000 per year. At that level, almost all student loan borrowers would fall within the program’s guidelines.

A few weeks ago, though, an article was sent out that talked about why some students are choosing to go Greek these days and why others aren’t. One paragraph, in particular, stuck with me:

The current economic crisis has changed the way students think about money, and Fouts acknowledges that perceptions about fraternity and sorority dues are no different. Chapters and student affairs offices, she said, will have to be “line-item specific” as to what these dues are for and how they will be spent to the benefit of the student. She argued that interested students should not be brought to think of their funds as “paying for friends,” as many an old cliché of fraternity life states.

Let me offer some comments. First, joining a fraternity is not paying for your friends any more than paying to go away to college is paying for a new social network or that joining any other organization that requires annual dues is paying for your friends. That’s a tired ass old argument that is so fundamentally flawed in both its view and application that it’s not even worth getting into extreme details here.

Second, I hope that students WILL begin to question where their dues are being applied – both locally and nationally. When I became the President of my local chapter many, many years ago one of the first things that I did was review where our money was flowing…and it wasn’t pretty. We were robbing one group of guys to pay for the next group of guys and creating a ridiculous cycle while accruing a massive amount of debt (it peaked at $9,000+ at one point). It was horrible. The guys who came before me either knew about the problem and didn’t fix it or didn’t know how to dig our chapter out of the hole.

To make a long story short, in the two years that I was in charge, we paid off the entire debt and reorganized our accounts in a more professional manner. Things went from very bad to very good (a little self-promotion, why not?).

When I began as a volunteer and began to dig more into where the money was going at the national level, while I understood the immediate needs and uses of the funds (which were all being used in a responsible manner), I began to worry about the future. My main concern was not with today’s financial issues, but with the financial issues of 2020 and 2050. With that in mind, I changed my main set of volunteer activities from assisting undergraduates (which is a lot of fun and the most rewarding experience in the fraternity) to focusing on how to build the financial future of our fraternity.

Can fraternities and sororities survive the current economic crisis? Yes – if they prove their worth. Fraternities and sororities need to be prepared to show the value that a new member gets for their dollars. If that “benefit” or value is the ability to attend fraternity-only parties, then the fraternity which is selling that product is likely going to find itself in dire straits. Any college student knows that there is always a party if they know where to look. Fraternity and sorority membership should provide lifelong benefits such as a built-in professional network and a built-in emotional support system.

Those fraternities that can prove their worth in the current economic climate will not only survive, but I expect them to thrive.

Pike said that the original, early pavilions along the boardwalk were wood and shuttered after the summer season was over.

She said the present pavilions were built during Mayor Clarence Hetrick’s tenure and later in the decades after the great hurricane of 1944 destroyed many of the older ones.

“They were modern for their time but weren’t open for the holiday season. Walter Reade even closed the Paramount theatre in the winter despite the pipe that ran underneath the boardwalk from the heating plant at the Casino,” Pike said.

It’s pretty cool that there are historians that study this type of stuff. I plan on getting over to the boardwalk at some point before Christmas to see what’s going on and how the shops are coming along. I know the last time I was down on Cookman Avenue (which was a few years ago), many of the shops were too pricey for my taste. I wonder if the current economic climate has had any impact on the prices down that way…

Christmas ceremonies are fun and I wish that I didn’t miss the Asbury Park tree-lighting this year. I have to remember to mark my calendar to head over there next year to see the lights turn on the tree.

First, I thought that this was a weird question because it is the rare employee that brings their work home with them. Then I immediately thought that this might have been the CEO’s way of asking us about ourselves so he could ascertain what we were like outside of the office. I figured that this was too awkward of a question for him to ask in a personal sense so it must be directly related to the job. I remember my response, given in a typical brash, young, over-confident tone, “Nothing keeps me up at night. Once the day is over I drive the hour back home and either teach at the college, do work for my website company, spend time with friends, or enjoy some down time.”

Dope.

Here we are a year later and I find myself bringing more work home with me, engaging my company in their proposed plan to get us Blackberries (which I supported from the beginning) so that we can be connected on the road, and looking at a calendar that is overstuffed with events. I also find myself not pleased with the potential for upward mobility in my current position and coming to the realization that working for my current company will not help me achieve any of my financial goals in a respectable time frame. Finally, I find myself in a job market where it would be unwise to up and leave one’s current employment to look for a better deal; especially when you really enjoy the job that you currently perform (and I do enjoy my job and the work that I do). In some respects, it’s a paradoxical time to be someone young in their career.

To get back to the point, though, the question was an odd one. What really DOES keep you up at night? What things weigh on your mind so much that you actually miss sleep to ponder the issues? I thought about these questions and came up with an answer or two…

The biggest thing that keeps me up at night is my student loan debt. And frankly, if that’s the biggest thing that keeps me up at night, then I’m in good shape! It’s the sheer size of the loans that keeps me awake. At the end of last year I owed a little more than $110,000; by the end of this year I should owe a little bit more or a little bit less than $105,000. I’m making significant progress, but I need to make much more progress and much quicker progress if I’m ever going to be in a position to be financially free. Related to the student loan debt is my ability to secure a mortgage when I finally buy a house in a few years. My credit rating is through the roof (somewhere between a 750 and an 800), but who knows how long the tightening credit markets will impact the housing industry?

That’s really about it in terms of what keeps me up at night. Sometimes I wish I had more of an ability to slowdown and relax or travel, but I work in the time to do an adequate amount of that stuff. One thing that I am well aware of is that you can’t live above your means and there is nothing more financially disturbing than when people live a credit card lifestyle. You know, the people who need to borrower from one source of capital to pay another source of capital or those who use money from non-permanent sources to pay semi-permanent expenses (constantly asking parents for money to the rent or for groceries, for example). But those people generally get what they have coming to them – you can’t live through a market fluctuation like we’re currently seeing and not expect that you need to personally change your financial habits.

What keeps me up at night? Student loan debt. But I’m working my plan to pay it down and I’m making good progress… I’m hoping that I can kick the repayments into high gear in the next few months!

The Biggest Loser: Families
For some reason I’m not getting as into this season of The Biggest Loser as I was into the last two seasons. Part of the problem is the contestants on the show. I just don’t care about their successes and failures like I cared about the contestants on the last two seasons. The concept of this season – that families would be competing on the show and that the trainers picked out their own trainees – was a novel one. For my television habits, though, it’s just not working.

Although a large part of the problem is NBC (and this is a recurring problem that you’ll see below). NBC is a great example of a company that is run by people who work with numbers and look only at the bottom line (which, by the way, currently sucks for parent company, GE). You can tell that no one at NBC is watching The Biggest Loser because there is NO way that a competent executive would allow the show to be broadcast the way it is. What does that mean? Well, every single time the show cuts to a commercial it is at a crucial point in the drama being told (whether that drama be real or made up). You can’t do that EVERY single time! Once in a while, you have to give your audience a bone and give them the payoff right there.

Plus, when the show comes back from commercial the viewer is treated to some 30 – 60 seconds of pre-commercial break content before getting to new content. What an insult! This is what you get when you combine “big television corporation” think with a “make more money” mindset.

Crusoe
This is a new show on NBC that follows the “new” adventures of Robinson Crusoe on his deserted island. For those of you that don’t know the story of Robinson Crusoe, it’s the story of a traveling merchant/businessman who is shipwrecked on an abandoned island. While on the island, he befriends a “savage” who is then named “Friday” – the day of the week he was saved by Crusoe. Think Lost and Gilligan’s Island, but starting in literary format almost three hundred years ago.

The first episode showed Crusoe defending his island against both pirates and corrupt Spanish prison guards – both groups which eventually wind up looking for buried treasure. Not a bad plot for a two-hour series premier. I thought the first episode was fun to watch and had the beginnings of a great show. Then the second episode came on…guh.

For some reason Friday and Crusoe spar over meaningless issues. Then we find out that there is a burial ground hidden within a mountain on the island – too Lost-esque for my liking. And not just too Lost-esque, but like a low-end version of Lost being pushed by a corporate powerhouse. Part of this show is also Crusoe’s constant flashbacks to what his life was like off of the island. Those flashbacks worked well in the first episode, but became burdensome in the second episode. Combine this with the fact that NBC doesn’t know how to go into a commercial break and you have the makings of an uncomfortable viewing situation for the people at home.

Finally, the preview for next week’s episode teased whether this would be the week that Crusoe gets off the island. So is this going to be the theme of the show each week? I hope not because that type of plot has no legs. Want proof? The preview suggested that a ship was coming to the island and this may be Crusoe’s chance to get off. Bleh. Wasn’t that the plot of the first episode? Let’s hope NBC doesn’t kill off what could be a good show here.

More thoughts on this season’s television shows coming soon!

One of my friends made the comment the other day that you can tell in Howard’s voice how he doesn’t even want to be there any more and I couldn’t agree more. The shows have been lacking lately, though I will give him credit because every once in a long while he hits a home run (usually something that has to do with Artie and his disastrous health). There are a few issues that confuse me about Howard and his current deal, though…

For example, Sirius XM ran a promotion to get new subscribers this spring leading into the summer months where their announcer clearly said, “And you won’t want to miss Howard Stern this summer!” Really? We won’t want to miss Howard this summer? Because I’m pretty sure that he’s only worked like two or three, 4-day work weeks this summer (that’s 8 to 12 days).

Also, how can the higher-ups at Sirius XM justify the $100 million per year expense on this guy when he works such a reduced schedule? I understand that the $100 million is to be used for his channels in addition to his salary, but when the company is on the verge of losing a talent like Bubba the Love Sponge, you have to wonder why so much money is funneled into The Howard Stern Show when it clearly is not using the money correctly (why don’t their microphones ever work right the first time).

Speaking of money, don’t tell me that Stern isn’t bringing in a ton of excess income on his channels. Subscribers to this commercial-free service are treated to frequent 10 – 15 minute non-live content breaks during the show. In other words, we get propaganda from the Howard 100 News team, commercials, and full-length songs (which is incredibly insulting considering the dozens upon dozens of music channels that are truly commercial free). Some of that money can be spread around, you know.

Anyway, it’s ridiculous that Stern is floating by on a contract that is designed for someone to NOT float by. I hope Mel Karmazin reigns this guy in because with his current attitude, the ridiculous amount of commercials, and his current schedule, Stern may actually be hurting the satellite radio movement more than helping it.