I could spend time revising it to make it better, but I am not going to do it. You will just have to deal with it - and get used to it from me. I won’t post daily. When I do, most of the time I will just hammer stuff out.

My friend asked me what I thought of Dave Ramsey. He has a website (daveramsey.com) and nationally syndicated radio program. I had never heard of him before, so I thought I’d see what he was all about. I haven’t spent much time on his website and have only listened to an hour of his radio program, so I still don’t know a lot about him, but my first impression is:Dave Ramsey = Jeff Galloway Bible Thumper

I respect that Jeff Galloway has stirred a lot of people up and got a lot of people, who wouldn’t normally exercise, to take on a physical challenge like a marathon. However, I think his methods are not conducive to maximizing performance. Hell, I would even say that his methodology hinders performance, but I guess participation is better than nothing. He, like Ramsey, should start with some basics rather than jump right into things.

Thanks to George for allowing me to post here. I did enjoy reading Kilgore’s essays. I am not Kilgore, nor am I Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch Phil Fisher or John Neff. I am a hack investor and even worse writer. Nonetheless, by writing these posts, I hope to reinforce some basics points on investing and hopefully stimulate some conversation to develop some new and better strategies on how we can all increase our returns.

When I read a news article or report I fancy, I’ll bring it to the attention to others here and give my opinion. I am not interested in partisan politics. I am more interested in investing, so I can make some more dough.

My basic investment philosophy is not, as the quote goes, “Don’t just stand there, do something”. For the most part it can be summed up with the newer cliche, “Don’t just do something, stand there.”

Where to begin? I’ll start with some short points. Then maybe delve a little deeper into these ideas with posts later. I don’t claim that these are original ideas or my own. They are just points that I have picked up from reading books, articles, or heard over the radio. They come from people who I think are a lot more knowledgeable on the subject matter than I am.

Please welcome gimme-five’s newest author, Klives.  I know very little about Klives, except that his email address implies he is somehow associated with Kilgore, one of gimme-five’s former authors.  He plans to write a few investment columns for the site.

Anyways, I hope everyone enjoys his writing.  Sorry I haven’t been very active on the site lately.  I’m taking the LSATs on September 30th and studying for those along with school stuff has really taken a lot of my time.  I’ll write somewhat regular articles starting in October.

Interesting article from the Guardian about how many people who consider themselves to be environmentalists are just talking:

I know people who profess to care deeply about global warming, but who would sooner drink Toilet Duck than get rid of their Agas, patio heaters and plasma TVs, all of which are staggeringly wasteful.

To some extent, this is true.  Jon H. posted an article on gimme-five expressing the problem with celebrities preaching about cutting emissions, but at the same time driving around in Hummers and living in multiple gigantic homes that drain tons of energy.

I can blame myself to some degree here.  Although I do buy Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs and turn off my (and other’s) lights and bike instead of drive whenever possible, I do a lot of stuff that uses energy.  I drive to visit my girlfriend a few times every semester, and she comes to visit me.  This is something that I really find important, and I personally am willing to accept the fact that it is wasteful because I value the time with my girlfriend much more than the impact of my driving.  However, others have expressed to me that I am being a bit of a hypocrite here.  I disagree because I consider seeing my girlfriend something that is incredibly important to me.  [don’t worry, Jessica, I’m always going to continue to visit you on a regular basis!  I promise!].  But I see the point, that technically I am not doing my best to reduce my waste to the minimum possible.

I guess this has been out for a while, but you can use Yahoo Finance to create a display on your own website that shows your visitors which stocks you own and how they are doing.  You can see mine right here, with a few indices substituted for index funds I own that won’t show up on the display.  Coolness!

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