I’m looking for a townhouse and prices are downright ridiculous. I’ve narrowed down what I’m looking for in a house to a 3 bedroom, 2+ bathroom townhouse in the $260k - $320k range in a relatively nice area south of Baltimore, MD. I can rent an apartment for approximately $1,000 (most likely less than that because of promotions and the like) and so after reading a whole bunch of gibberish online, I’ve resorted to using a couple freely available calculators to see what the best option for me is.

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In a previous post, I talked about giving that ex24.com iPod Shuffle promotion a try. I missed out on the previous promo of $100, 1 trade, and run away with a free iPod; so I had to go with the $500, 1 trade, and lots of waiting. I sold my single share of AAPL, netting 91 cents after the 80 cent purchase commission, and I received a response from them about my iPod: 4 weeks. When I get it, I’ll take a picture of my spoils and wait for about 5 months (or 6 months plus April 10th).

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A little while back I mentioned I was going to begin my search for a house and on Sunday (yesterday), I visited three prospective homes. I learned something very very quickly, something I didn’t fully realize beforehand — townhouses are freaking expensive. The cheapest of the three homes we saw was $280k (the other three were basically $320k). The other thing I realized was I didn’t know anything about what to look for in a home, so I brought a discriminating eye (very very important), my girlfriend…

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With skyrocketing gas prices these days, knowing where to pay the least for gas is clutch. I thought it would be a great idea if someone setup some sort of database that people could input gas prices and that everyone would have access to. Then I discovered GasBuddy.com that provides just that. You can also get quick access to local information by going to [name]GasPrices.com for whatever state or major metropolitan area. MarylandGasPrices.com will give you data for Maryland.

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Yesterday I wrote a joke post about how I won about a billion dollars in an “international lottery.” Hopefully everyone understood I didn’t actually win a billion dollars but I was just pointing out how obvious a scam that was. Everyone with an email address has gotten email from “Bank of America” (not really BoA, a farce BoA) or “Paypal,” requesting personal information. I’m sure you’ve even been asked by the envoy of a recently deceased monarch (Nigerian?) to “hold funds” if you are willing to send them some bank information. Maybe you’ve been asked to verify your account information at Ebay… but bottom line, they’re all phishing scams and you shouldn’t respond to any request by anyone to provide sensitive information.

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Can you imagine my luck? I didn’t even know I entered in the 1,300,000,000.00 international lottery but luckily Mr. William Lopez from Super Standard Company notified me by email that I have been approved for a lump sum payment of 1,625,000.39! That’s awesome! I’m so rich! I’m going to buy two houses right now because they say the real estate market is sizzling hot right now. I mean, when you win 1,625,000.39 in lottery, you can blow it on whatever you want right? Read on to see the notification email and all that jazz!

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Many friends of mine are opening up Roth IRAs for the first time and have asked where the best place to put that account. My first thought was to go with a brokerage firm that has favorable fee schedules for the investments they’re looking to use. A firm that has higher stock transaction fees but lower mutual fund fees works for someone who only wants to leverage the benefits of “automatic” diversification and will never buy a single share of Microsoft. Conversely, if you’re looking to bank on the sustained growth of a handful of companies or want to jump onto ETFs, a firm with low stock transaction fees is where you’d like to go.

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