Why did I invest so little?

This question is in my head all the time since yesterday.

Recently I stayed away from the stock market. Mainly because of the bearish market. Most investments are very risky nowadays. I’m also not an investing guru and when I don’t feel comfortable and don’t know what is going on concerning stocks I prefer to stay away and watch the situation from the side.

Watch the situation from the side.

Exactly, staying away from market doesn’t mean I do not learn, observe and look for investing opportunities. All the time I read books, comments, analyses and of course I analyze many charts. I’m passionate about this so it’s not a problem for me. But if you have to force yourself to spend some time with charts, maybe investing is not for you.

Yesterday I found interesting stocks which I bought. Technical situation was quite interesting and additionally, fundamental situation was very attractive. Actually, I can’t say too much about fundamental, as I’m evangelist of technical analysis, but there were good comments about it from my trusted friends, who are more behind this approach. Technically, stocks have just started short-term uptrend. It was very tempting to jump in, and so I did.

Why did I invest so little?

Despite of attractive technical and fundamental signals I’m very cautious. I think that most investments right now are very risky. Therefore I invested only a little money.

No more than hour after I opened position, the stocks soared. Today, it was a replay day and in two days I made almost 12%. Great, but….

Why did I invest so little?

It is very common that after successful picking a stock an investor is asking this question. This feeling that you could invest more and now enjoy much bigger earnings appears and it is difficult to free your mind from it. A simple way to help yourself is to answer the following question:

Why did I invest so little?

• I’m a cautious investor.
• I don’t take unnecessary risk.
• I don’t put all my eggs in one basket.
• Stocks don’t always follow technical and fundamental analysis.
• This time I made a good pick, but it could be also the wrong one.
• I obey my investing rules.

You have to control your emotions. It is very important ability especially for successful investors.
All in all, I made a good investment. I didn’t take unnecessary risk and I followed my investing rules and I earned a nice amount of money.

photo credit: Buster McLeod

All my previous roundup posts have following numbers starting from 1 with the first edition. Last edition was 7th. But honestly saying, I see no serious advantage of numbering these posts, so since today, roundups are without numbers.

Below are links that I recently found interesting. Enjoy.

How to earn money from blogging? Great question. This is a very general article and doesn’t cover details but… it is always interesting what is written about blogging beyond the blogosphere.

If you are interested in meditation and you short How To, this is post for you. Help yourself to overcome depression and enjoy many more benefits of this skill.

Neil wrote about 10 ways to save time. As time is very limited resource, this post is simply a must read.

Effortless way to achieve any goal is presented on Dumb Little Man. I never thought it can be so simple.

J.D. wrote a great post concerning multitasking and its influence on his productivity.

Finally, Trent describes fourteen techniques for improving your work life balance. Read it to become an office ninja.

If you want your post or article listed in my next roundup, send a link to me via contact page.

We are constantly learning about personal finances, we are introducing plenty of frugal habits into our lives and we are taking a lot of various actions in order to save money. However, reading daily many great blogs concerning these subjects I find tons of frugal ideas that don’t look interesting for me.

Ok, I don’t mean that they don’t work at all. They don’t work for me because they consume more of my resources (usually time) than they bring back as a result (usually saved money).

Both time and money are very important resources and we very often exchange one of them for the other. Many of these exchanges are not profitable for us. Why?

1. It is difficult to estimate value of our time.
2. Many factors influence value of time, making it different for each of us.
3. We are not always conscious; how often we trade our time for money at a loss.

Therefore it is important to know how much we value our time.

There is bunch of possible approaches, neither one is perfect. But we are not looking for ideal formula. We need a good estimation that will help us to take right decisions.

I always use two methods.

• I take my monthly income from regular job and I divide it by number of hours I worked during that period of time. This way I get how much is my one hour work.
• I take my total monthly income (includes salary and all passive incomes) and I divide it by number of hours in month. This gives me an average amount of money I earn each hour.

Of course you can modify my formulas. You may find a different way to estimate your current value of time. Please, remember that this is only a quite abstract indicator. You want to use it only as a support to some money related decisions. Don’t treat this as a determinant of your personal value, your assets or anything similar.

When knowing the value of your hour can help?

There are many examples in common daily situations, but most of them concern buying. Sometimes you look for cheaper price of what you want to buy. You check many catalogues, visit shops, talk with shop assistants, and browse internet. Finally you spend more time and other resources (like your energy or gas in your car), than you save money on buying at better price. Cheaper price doesn’t always mean cheaper.

Other situations where this approach can help you find the best solution are: choosing mean of transport when going to the certain place or eating at restaurant vs. cooking at home. I’m pretty sure there are other possibilities to apply this method.

Two important things I have to add while closing to the end. Not everybody is able to freely trade hour into money at any given time and without limits. That is why it is nothing wrong to dedicate time in order to save money on lower rate than usual.

Second thing you should keep in mind is that option looking optimal may be less valuable as far as other aspects are concerned. For example, baking own bread consumes more time and effort, than buying it at grocery, but it can be simply interesting and fun. So, it is not always the way to go, to consider only time and money.

photo credit: vastfield

Taking a break from blogging can be a very beneficial experience. I didn’t write anything for only a few days and I’ve already noticed some positive effects. I think that longer break, like about two weeks, would have stronger influence on me, but at the moment I don’t want to skip posting for any longer.

What can you expect from taking a break?

Increased motivation to write

If you love, or at least like writing, you will experience increased motivation to do so. Not doing something you really enjoy for a certain period of time can make you miss this activity and look forward to return to it.

New ideas

Of course a lot of new ideas for interesting posts will come to your mind. Especially, when during break you dedicate your blogging time to other activities. They can bring you fresh ideas. Don’t forget to capture them with your notepad.

Life beyond the blog

Many bloggers spend way too much time with their blogs. Don’t forget about your family. Don’t forget about your friends. While taking a break from blogging, you have a good opportunity to enjoy more time with people you love, doing various interesting things. People, activities and experiences will bring you even more new ideas. More new ideas will increase your urge to share them with your readers.

Rediscover reasons why you blog

Why do you blog? It is very likely, you started blogging for one reason, but it is no longer up to date. Being busy everyday with increasing your blogging skills, writing a new content, tuning your design, networking and etc. you could not notice that the answer for the question “why do you blog?” has possibly changed. It is good time to think over it. Take a look at blogging from new perspective. Identify your emotions and goals related to it.

Different statistics

If you don’t timestamp your posts for the period of break, you can expect different statistics on your blog. It is always interesting to analyze some new data that comes from uncommon circumstances. Did number of visits go down? Did readers visit other pages than the last post? Did they go to the archives? What were the top visited pages?

Health

This topic regularly returns to us, bloggers. It is essential to take care of our health and stay away from unhealthy habits. Blogging break is a perfect time to introduce healthier diet, more exercises and more sleep. All in all, health benefits will positively influence our blogging performance.

As you can see, taking a break from blogging can bring a strong, positive impact on you. From time to time, it is definitely a move worth to consider. But remember that you shouldn’t do this as an excuse, when you are simply lazy or suffer from lack of motivation.

photo credit: stefg