I am not a bit surprised that Leno is in trouble at NBC. Moving that format to 10P in the 21st century was foolish. It may have been okay in the 50s or 60s but that show was doomed the day that Jay Leno walked on to the stage.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Conan is a flop in the 11:30 time slot.

The executives that put this together should be fired. It should be the first thing that Comcast does now that they have control of the company from GE. Fire the buffoons that did this. Talk about destroying a valuable commodity! Warren Buffet says that you should only invest in companies that can be profitable even if idiots run them. I don’t know if I agree with that advice but I definitely don’t think you should invest in companies that are run by buffoons!

This must be why GE does so badly in my Confident Investor Rating – they simply do not know how to drive the value of their products.  Hopefully, Comcast will do better.

The money that you invest in stocks needs to be money that you don’t need immediately. This does not mean that it is not necessarily money that you won’t need for 20-30 years. If you have money that you are confident that you will not need for decades, you should probably invest that money in your own home. Follow the old Benjamin Franklin saying “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

If you currently pay 7% interest on your home loan, any extra money that you apply to your mortgage will immediately give you a 7% return for the balance of your mortgage time. Therefore if you pay a one-time extra $1,000 on a 7% mortgage that has 23 years left on it, then it will result in $5,002.04 that you didn’t have to pay over the course of the 23 years. This is an absolutely guaranteed return – over the course of 23 years you will be over $5,000 wealthier due to that one-time investment.

Your home mortgage is the safest “buy and hold” investment that you can make! You already know that you pay a certain percentage. If you pay the loan off early, you effectively make that loan percentage as an investment return.

Also, the same logic goes for your car loan and definitely your credit cards. This is typically more short-term debt than your home. Quick payoff on any short-term debt will guarantee you the quickest and best investment strategy simply because you do not spend those pennies, you save them. Benjamin Franklin will be proud of your efforts to quickly and efficiently pay off your short-term and long-term debt.

The absolute best investment that you can make is to pay off your higher interest loans!

If you are carrying any credit card debt, you are probably paying double digit interest rates. This is short term money so you have to put yourself on a budget and pay these debts off. Whatever your current interest rate on your credit card, that is exactly the interest rate you will effectively earn by paying off that short-term debt. In today’s economy, I don’t know of any other legal investment that will GUARANTEE your return at double digit percentage rates.

If you have a car payment that is over 6% interest rate, that is also a likely target for accelerated payments. Once again, a 6.9% loan on your car means that you are guaranteed to get 6.9% return by paying the loan off more quickly (minus inflation). Since car loans rarely go longer than 60 months, this is medium term money (as opposed to short-term for credit cards). If you don’t need the extra $100 in the next month, spend that money on your car loan.

However, you may have bought your car with a subsidized loan from the manufacturer and therefore paying a very low rate that is approaching 0%. In that case, you may want to slow down this payment and only pay the minimum amount that you can. Essentially, inflation will grow faster than your interest rate so your cash equivalent spending will go down over the course of time. In this case, you are earning whatever the inflation rate is in interest!

Your home loan is probably different. Chances are you have been able to drive your interest rate down below 8 or 9%. Your home loan may still be 10, 20 or more years left so any money that you put into it is very long-term. You may need this money before the 10 years are up and if that is the case then it will be quite expensive to get it back out. It is reasonable to pay a bit extra on your home loan but be careful that it doesn’t impact your regular cash flow – and pay off your credit cards first!

In order to do all this, you need to start budgeting your money. Check out these sites for some advice on how to successfully budget your money.

[save] Budgeting for Dummies

How to budget your money for debt relief

The Fluid Budget

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