What to do about the stock market sittuation?

Wait it out, in the long run it will likely benefit you.

That is what A post over at Get Rich Slowly is claiming and the reasoning seems to apply. Statistically at least the market will rebound from this lull/recession/depression/retirement evisceration.

If you are younger (20's or 30's) now is a great time to throw some money into the stock market. If you are a bit older, your risks are hopefully shifted to protect you from these types of troubles (bonds/cd's/etc).

About the only people who should not be throwing money at the stock market at this point are those with a lot of debt, or people who believe the financial system is on the verge of collapse, in which case what are you doing reading this? Shouldn't you be off preparing for the anarchy/lawlessness that is yet to come?

Rent vs. Buy in/around Seattle

A while back I was looking into buying a condo/townhome in/around the Seattle area. There is appeal in setting up shop in an interesting neighborhood. The problem was two fold, I had a credit issue (college was tough, and it is repairing) and the cost of living in Seattle is so darn expensive. According to this article over at Seattle Bubble renting is in fact cheaper then buying in the long run (contrary to everything you usually hear). The trouble comes in actually socking the savings away. That's always been my trouble...save save sa... oh look at that shiny new widget.

That is my struggle.

Lawrence Lessig at the Web 2.0 Conference

A pretty great presentation from L. Lessig again.

Financial crisis compared to other crashes.

Seattle Bubble, A Seattle real estate and financial news blog has up a comparison of the current market sittuation and the crashes in the market of old.
http://seattlebubble.com/blog/2008/10/24/comparing-past-market-crashes/

Particularly cool was this chart:
Click for a full version of the image

Mint.com out of Beta

Mint.com is a really cool way to track your spending. I have been using it for a few months now and it makes tracking what I spend across MANY bank accounts really easy. They just released it from beta today and the investment tracking feature looks really flippin cool.

Check out Mint if you want one place to track your spending. It's free!

What can Web 2.0 Do for you?

It can reduce your cellphone bill for one.
Ever wonder how your plan stacks up against plans offered by your carrier or other carriers?
Well some very clever people have put together a nice service to help you do just that. If you are looking for a new cellphone plan or just wanting to compare how you are doing vs. the competition Bill Shrink can help you do it.
It analyzes the way you use your phone (either by what you tell them, or by importing your bill) and figures out if you could save money by going with another carrier. For the most part it does very good too.
You can set preferences for signal vs cost and filter by plans that will work with your current phone.
All of this is wrapped up in a slick interface. Interested in figuring out what the "Web 2.0" hype is about? Check out this site for a good example.