A study by the Consumer Federation of America shows that a mere 40% of Americans have a separate ”emergency” savings account.  Are you part of that 40%?

While my wife and I do have some money stashed away for a rainy day, it’s not in a garunteed investment like a money-market savings account.  While I’m not making excuses, it seems like a run of the mill money market savings account is a terrible place to put your money to work.  Lousy interest rates, well below 1% in most cases, just doesn’t seem like an appealing place to put a stash of cash.

How much you need to put away …

Unfortunately for my philosophy, the greed continues.

I had a buy order in for GLD today at $65.00 with the idea that the sell off from yesterday would roll over to the market open today, the chaos selling would subside and the bull market would press on.  No dice.

The StreetTracks Gold Trust opened at $66.73, a $1.32 higher than the close yesterday.  Evidently the fear in the gold market (and others) was short lived.

I’m not sure I’d call this a market correction, either.  Sure, we had a huge sell off in a single day but based on today’s trading activity I’m not sure you …

Asian stocks are resuming their declines in early trading, as Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped as much as 3.23% just after the opening bell. 

Markets had not yet opened in Shanghai, where the Composite Index’s 8.8% loss Tuesday triggered a global sell-off.

What a terrible day in the market!  If you made money today, you’re either short, lucky, or lying.

Overall, the markets dropped like a rock on news out of China that their market dropped over fears the government might intervene in an attempt to slow down the market.  Eeesh, sounds eerily familiar…

“The market has risen so rapidly in the last year that there’s a growing sense of concern that policy makers will tighten control of the markets,” said Sijin Cheng, an analyst at the Eurasia Group.   -Source

I’ve never liked hard, quick runs in any market because it usually triggers over reaction in either direction.

So the next question is, will …

So I took a dive into the precious metals market on Friday and bought 20 shares of the StreetTracks Gold Trust (GLD: chart, web) at $67.96.

Naturally that turned out to be close to the high for the day, and then dipped back down to $67.72 on the close.  Se la vi.

If it continues to drop, I’ll buy more.  Here’s why:

Tangible gold is not tied to the U.S. economy, or any economy for that matter.  The U.S. dollar has been on shaky ground as of late, and I fear that it will continue to be weighed down as the direction of the economy is in question….

So the numbers are in, and they’re as expected for Tax Season 2006.

My wife and I will get $1,850 back on our Federal returns, and another $550 back on our State returns.  I expected we’d get a healthy refund this year due to the fact that we ended up paying estimated taxes in 2006 due to the fact that we owed money on our 2005 taxes due to a large capital gains sale on some stock I sold.

Evidently, if you owe the government more than $1,000 in a given year, they strongly suggest that you pay estimated taxes based on your current …

Presidents Day brought good news for XM and Sirius stock holders.  While long speculated, a merger between the two companies came to fruition Monday afternoon.

And while both companies are go for orbit, the idea still has get through a tough de-orbit burn.  The FCC, the SEC, and the justice department are all going to weigh in on the deal, and depending on who you talk to, any three letter acronym could burn the deal on the launch pad.

Monopoly seems to be the word de jurfor the skeptics, while others are fairly optimistic about the odds of the deal getting a blessing from all parties.

I …

Tonight CNN ran a big piece on how insurance companies are trying to settle claims for next to nothing compared to what they’re worth, in many cases not even coming close to covering medical bills, let alone covering the repair to your vehicle.

While the television report was more in-depth, this article covers the high points.

The whole concept of this report brings up the question: If insurance companies are in business to insure your assets, but they’re also in business to make money for themselves, isn’t that a conflict of interest?

After all, every penny they shell out in claims is one less penny …

It took us a while, but both Roth IRA’s are fully funded for 2006.  Unfortunately, we had to pull cash from our car savings fund, which hurts, but it had to be done.

We can make the old Honda run a few thousand more miles and get an extra couple months out of the old girl, but we must get the retirement account funded to the maximum allowable value.

Once the cash is in the accounts, I’ll have to figure out what to do with it.  Gold is attractive right now, and having some cash in reserve to buy some more Ford …

Well, patience paid off and my 200 shares of Ford got filled at $8.49. 

If the stock continues to dip, I may buy some more shares, but otherwise I want to see some appreciation to solidify my position.