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For those of you who have the passion of managing your own investment, I'm recommending a quick lesson on behavioral finance provided by Whitney Tilson, fund manager and investment columnist. What is behavioral finance? In short, "Behavioral finance attempts to explain how and why emotions and cognitive errors influence investors and create stock market anomalies such as bubbles and crashes."

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Recently I shared a lot about my experience at Prosper.com by making micro persona loans ("After 100 Personal Loans ...", "Is Micro Personal Lending Worth the Trouble?"). With more than $9,000 invested in over 100 personal loans, it is time to reflect and decide on what I should do next with my lending experience. (6 comments)

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CNNMoney reports that according to a real estate research company, the medium home is overpriced by an average of 14%. With no surprise, towns in California dominate the top 10 list: Santa Barbara-Santa Maria CA (86%) Naples FL (72%) Modesto CA (71%) San Diego CA (70%) Riverside-San Bernardino CA (64%) Stockton CA (64%) San Jose CA (61%) Sacramento CA (59 ...

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No more ING Direct. With yesterday's hike of savings APY to 5.15%, EmigrantDirect again proved that it wants to keep paying top dollars for parking your savings. I have to say 5.15% with ultimate liquidity as a savings account really makes this an appealing offer now. Considering the fact that the famous ING Direct only wants to pay an unimpressive ... (2 comments)

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I was checking my paystub for July and just realized that my social security tax payment for the month declined substantially from previous months' levels. Year to date, I have contributed $5,840.40 to the social security program, or the annual maximum ($94,200 income taxed at 6.2% rate). This means starting in August, my monthly take-home pay from my day job ... (9 comments)

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A recent BusinessWeek article discussed Kiva.org, an online experiment that allows people in developed countries to make micro lending as little as $25 to people in need in developing countries. Yes, it is a nice experiement for sure, but I doubt it is a viable business model. Of course, one can expect to get a lot of satisfaction by being ... (4 comments)

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Tim Beyers at Fool.com reminds us that automatic dividend investment is applicable to stock positions too: Brokers are generally very helpful when it comes to reinvesting dividends. Most often, you'll simply choose an option online to have the dividends from the stocks you own reinvested. Better still, the service is often free. Here's a short rundown of what I learned ... (5 comments)

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Money magazine names the top 10 best jobs in America. 1. Software Engineer 2. College Professor 3. Financial Adviser 4. Human Resources Manager 5. Physician Assistant 6. Market Research Analyst 7. Computer IT Analyst 8. Real Estate Appraiser 9. Pharmacist 10. Psychologist When I graduated from college, I was determined to be a great software engineer. Today, I'm envisioning that ... (6 comments)

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I recently mentioned that I have been addicted to Prosper, the online marketplace that allows people-to-people micro lending. On average, I am spending 15 minutes a day on the site finding credible loan requests I want to get involved. However, is it worth the trouble — both the time and (slightly) loss of sleep during the night — to make …

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If you live in a state with sales tax, chances are you can get a tax break on certain purchases in the first weekend of August. Each state has different rules, so you might want to consult the following summary provided by CCH.

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