Re-shuffling your Portfolio

You should be saving for retirement, which means you are buying mutual funds, ETFs, stocks, bonds, or some other form of investments. You should look into your investments on a schedule. For example, once after the 90 day period that you are allowed to trade your no-load mutual funds without a fee and twice a year. Those dates should be memorable if you tend to forget to check up on your investments.

Just like checking your annualcreditreport.com on specified dates such as time changes and the 4th of July, you should set dates to re-balance your portfolio. If associating re-balancing with particular dates is not memorable enough, you should mark your yearly calendar with dates now. Almost everyone has a phone with a calendar capability and if you are planning to keep your phone for awhile, you should set your phone calendar with an alarm. Do it now.

Re-balancing is so important as you do not want too much cash, you also do not want investments that are failing and you would not buy today. If it's been awhile since your last close look, you probably bought new investments. You should know how everything fits together. You can use the Morningstar X-Ray to evaluate this.

Investment Advise - Invest in What You Understand

People often follow the news or stock picks by analysts and choose stocks based on this information. If you are going to invest in individual stocks rather than mutual funds, you really need to know what you are investing in.

The best way to pick stocks is to invest in what you know and understand. If you do not understand what a company is doing, like a new technology that they are heavily investing in, then steer clear.

If you work in a certain sector like the food industry, then you should understand who the big players are and who has the best business strategy. You should invest in those companies. You should be able to spot the red flags in industries that you are familiar with much faster than you would in a stock that you picked based on a newspaper article.

Therefore, always know the company or at least what they do, listen to the news to get extra information, and pick wisely.

Investments and Holding On

A lot of people hold on to bad investments that they know they want to sell simply because people want to recover any losses that might have happened.

I've been skimming through Suze Orman's Young Fabulous and Broke and bumped into some common sense knowledge that not everyone follows. You must learn how to let go of investments that are no longer working. Once in awhile review your stocks and mutual funds and see if you would still buy them today. If you wouldn't buy them today, why are you holding on to them now when you can be making a profit somewhere else? It might be difficult to loose money in the stock market, however, the missed opportunity cost and the potential for further losses is too great so get out of the investments that are no longer working for you today!

Mutual Funds Trading

Unlike stocks, mutual funds do not trade in the middle of the day. The stock market is open 9-4 eastern time and you can only buy and sell mutual funds at the end of the day. Therefore, even if you place an order during the day, it will not be executed until the end of the day. Also, if you want to see the value of your mutual fund, you must wait until the end of the day.

Mutual funds consist of a variety of stocks and it would be too difficult to compute the value of all stocks in a given mutual fund at a specific time as stock prices can change every second.

New IRA Brokerage

A couple of days ago, I opened a new IRA Brokerage account. I picked Charles Schwab out of all the discount online brokerages because of the following factors:

1. Great website (TD Ameritrade was a contender, but I heard that sometimes the website is unavailable and that's not acceptable even as a rumor, especially if you want to do some trading on the spot)
2. Easy search for mutual funds
3. Largest amount of no-load funds available (I like no-load mutual funds for the IRA account as overall they are less risky than individual stocks)
4. Funds available from multiple families (important as I want the greatest diversity to find a fund that is highly ranked)
5. Great customer service (I received a welcome call, unlike when I opened ShareBuilder)
6. Low start-up costs (Fidelity and Vanguard are great companies, however, they require initial deposits of $2,500 and $3,000 respectively)
7. Overall highly ranked and reviewed online

Personal Finance iPhone Apps

After reviewing the apps for a months or so, here is my list of the useful personal finance iPhone apps:

1. Mint.com - see what happens to all of your money
2. All your banks such as Chase, which even allows you to take a picture of your check to deposit instead of visiting an actual branch or an atm
3. PayPal - Monitor your account and send money to friends easily
4. Investment accounts such as ShareBuilder to monitor your holdings
5. Zillow.com - useful if you are looking to rent or buy or are just interested in the prices of the houses around your location
6. LoanCalc - See how much sooner you will payoff any loan if you increase your minimum payment
7. Pay Off Debt Lite - See what percentage of your debt you have paid so far since the beginning to motivate you to pay more
8. Credit Card accounts such as Amex to allow yourself to pay your bills from your phone
9. ScoreAdvice - See what you can do with your credit score to improve it
10. Ask Dave - Although I don't always agree with what he says, he does have some good advice, this is an app with clips of his radio show
11. NPR News - the Money Matters radio program releases some great shows on personal finances
12. Local stores such as Walgreen's app to see what's on sale this week
13. Daily deal apps such as Groupon to see the deals of the day
14. News websites such as CNN money to keep up with the current personal finance news
15. Coupon Sherpa - coupons for retail stores near you, although coupons seem to be available for only a few stores
16. GasBuddy - will help you find the cheapest gas near you
17. Kayak - to find the best travel deals
18. Around me deal apps such as AAA Discounts (must have AAA membership) state discounts available using your current location
19. Bar code scanners such as ShopSavvy will help you find the best deal online or in stores
20. Key Ring - if you forget your loyalty card, you can scan the card on your Key Ring app instead
21. Check-in apps like Yelp that allow you to check in to a restaurant or a shop and  receive a discount or a freebie

If you have other personal favorites, let us know in the comments.

MorningStar X-Ray of Your Portfolio

If you hold several stocks or mutual funds, chances are you are not aware of the percentage of your portfolio that is in US stocks or in utilities. A great way to know the exact breakdown of what you hold by percentage is to do the MorningStar X-Ray. You can also do this before you buy an additional stock or mutual fund to make sure that you are saturating your portfolio in one type of area (unless that's what you are looking for). It's always best though - to go for diversification.