I feel bad. I missed my child’s birthday. Considering the fact, however, that my child is a subdirectory on a shared server, I don’t feel too bad.

I started this site just over a year ago, starting with my personal, um, personal finance history. My main goal with the site, at first, was to document my learning process as I began to study, and trade, stocks. I also touched on some personal stories which I thought taught good “life lessons”, such as how I was nearly robbed blind by unauthorized ACH transactions.

My day job is as a web content manager at an investment advisory service. Obviously, my company has played a big part in my learning experience when it comes to investing. I haven’t touched much on my actual job though, as it doesn’t have all that much to do with personal finance. But I do know a fair amount about search engine optimization and site monetization, as I deal with that almost daily.

I tried a few times to do that with this site. The problem, I found, is I had to turn the site into something I really didn’t like.

I only like writing when I feel I have something interesting to contribute. I only like linking when I feel that link also offers something interesting to read. I like writing accurate titles instead of ones that appear high on organic searches. I like voicing the contrarian opinion (invest in individual stocks!) instead of repeating the same dull advice of the masses (index fund!). I like venting about things that frustrate me, hopefully in a constructive manner.

What I do not like is writing about the same subject you see almost daily on other personal finance blogs (do we honestly need another list of how to increase your gas mileage, or a comparison between Roth and Simple IRA’s?). Speaking of which - I hate writing lists. 90% of the internet now seems comprised of lists. Do we really need to dumb down our writing that much? I do not like writing several posts a week that solely consisting of links to other sites, solely in order to increase my page rank. I do not like writing posts that serve solely as advertisements. And once again, I do not like regurgitating the same personal finance information you see all over the internet.

So where does this leave me? With a site that won’t make me money (although I was able to sell an ad or two, which was nice) or make me an internet star. It also leaves me ostracized from the personal finance (please find it in your heart to forgive me for using this term) blogosphere. But I’m fine with that, because what it does leave me with is a site I enjoy writing for, and hopefully one that at least some people find entertaining and useful.

I have to admit: I just wrote a list of all the personal finance sites I’ve read over the past year, and pretty much lambasted the ones I really dislike. Then I deleted that, because I’m the type of person who goes to those improv shows but can’t even boo the acts I don’t like (even when you’re told to cheer or boo to decide the winner).

Instead, this is a pretty easy way to find the sites I’m not a huge fan of: In the past month, have they offered $25 to sign up for an ING account? In the past week, have the mentioned a $100 Discover Card offer? If so, chances are I’m not a huge fan. My two problems with hawking these advertisements is that first, I have to read them over, and over, and over again on at least a dozen sites which all latch on to the exact same offer and then mention it every other day on their site.

Second, why do sites which supposedly promote financial responsibility keep pushing credit card offers down our throats? I love credit cards, and I’ve never had a balance in my life, but a lot of people who read these types of sites aren’t in the same situation, and I can’t help but chuckle at the hypocrisy of offering credit cards to them. Even if someone knows how to manage their spending on credit cards, it doesn’t exactly help their score when you try to get them to open up a new account every month. Banks aren’t much better either. Sure, it won’t effect your credit, but slinging your social security number all of the place and having accounts at ten financial institution for a measly $10 or $25 really doesn’t seem worth it - to the reader.

With that out of the way, I’d instead like to individually focus on a few sites that I really do like.

Advanced Personal Finance: This is a really high quality site. Sure, it has a fairly drab design (sorry!), and uses normal paragraph structure instead of a list every other post (gasp!). But it has solid content from a good writer, few ads, no empty posts just consisting of links, and is only updated when it has something interesting to say.

An English Major’s Money: I love this blog. Catchy title too. It takes the word “personal” in personal finance to heart, and more than any other site I really feel as though the writer lets you identify with her financial situation. It’s also the only site I can say inspired me to write more in their style.

Ask Dong: This guy is funny, to the point, and writes interesting posts. He also avoids all the things I hate.

Monogamoney: This is a newer blog, that I found when they left a comment on my site. It’s another clever name, written with a personal touch, and is very open in its writing.

Hmm … and it seems like that’s about it. I think part of the problem is that a lot of these sites don’t offer much to stand out from one another.

So what’s next for The Money Mythos? I’ll continue posting interesting personal finance stories as I happen upon them (or as they happen upon me). I’ll also continue updates on my stock trading, in the endless pursuit to show the average person that they can succeed buying individual stocks (up nearly 10% this year!).

Thanks for reading.

Just a quick note that number 141 of the Carnival of Personal Finance is up over at Broke Grad Student (I can identify with that!). My article, Five Advantages and Disadvantages to Online Banking, was one of the featured articles, so thanks!

The 113th Carnival of Personal Finance was released today at My Open Wallet. I am pleased to have been chosen as one of the editor’s top picks with my post, Cleveland versus Boston: A study in housing costs.

On that note, my wife and I made a short jaunt up to Salem and Nashua, New Hampshire this weekend to look at housing up there. We had noticed online that the houses there are quite a bit more reasonable than nearly anywhere on the east coast of Massachusetts. The major downside I saw was increasing my daily commute ten-fold (as I live in the same town where I work, it would take me instead nearly an hour if I lived in New Hampshire).

Unfortunately, we soon realized that these New Hampshire towns were far from suburbs. While we weren’t able to fully explore the area, what we mostly came across were rural areas spotted with strip malls.

This weekend, we are instead going to look at Durham, New Hampshire, home of the University of New Hampshire and hopefully an area closer to what we are looking for.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the “true” cost of an iPhone. This is in reference to the costs of a two year contract with AT&T. For the most part, I’ve found this all a bit, well, obvious. People are campaigning about the thousands of dollars an iPhone ends up costing as if its the first cell phone to require a contract.

However, I did read one good article in this vein today at TheStreet.com entitled The True Cost of an iPhone? Try $17,670. The gist of the article is this: If you were to instead invest the $2,720 it costs to purchase and own an iPhone for two years, when you retire in 35 years you would have an extra $17,670.

To me, it doesn’t feel like this article is trying to convince people not to purchase an iPhone as much as it is an article to remind people not only of the importance of retirement savings, but also about how much compounding interest really adds up to. Which is great, because it takes a purchase that I’m sure many people are contemplating buying, and reminds them that you should always consider where your savings stand (whether it’s emergency savings or a house down payment) before buying what may be a somewhat frivolous expenditure.

I would love an iPod, and would probably use it a fair amount too. Yet at $599, it’s simply too expensive for me to consider, and being in the realm of technology, is something that I like finding a way around.  Same with an iPod … while I would love the sleekness and easy to use interface, I am just as happy using the 1GB Sandisk MP3 player I got from Woot for $14.99.

I also suppose this is a good time to mention I am quite happy with my share of Apple (APPL) up about 9% since I bought it last week. Considering the higher than expected sales and margin on the phone, I’m not too surprised!

• Clever Dude paid off his car loan early. Oddly enough, I am in the exact same situation - about $3000 on a 1.9% interest loan. And I have to admit, paying it off early is very tempting. However, since the only money I could put towards that is emergency savings money, looks like I’ll be forced to pay it off month by month anyway!
• Sun Financial is continuing to have problems with unauthorized charges on his American Express card. This is interesting because it shows that while credit cards do usually provide good protection against unauthorized charges, it isn’t always as easy as just making a quick call and getting the charge dropped.
• Lazy Man and Money further describes his experiences with Prosper.com. I actually went ahead and opened up an account of my own because of this. However, I’m a bit hesitant to put too much money into it without testing the waters first. Unfortunately, since all the loans are three years long, it would take three years to really test the site. Still, I figure I’ll try a $50 loan to one of the “AA” lenders and see how it goes over a few months.

The 102nd Carnival of Personal Finance was posted a few days ago at Money Smart Life, and I am very pleased to have my article, Why You Need More Than an Index Fund, featured as one of the editor’s picks!

Be sure to check out the rest of the entries in the carnival as well - there are always good stories to be told and lessons to be learned.

Here’s my weekly roundup of stories I found useful or interesting this week:

How to Fund an IRA

First of all I think the reader mentions a very important aspect of an IRA. A Roth IRA (or a Traditional IRA) is not an investment in and of itself. You may hear someone say that you should open up a Roth IRA because they have great returns. You have to remember that the IRA doesn’t produce returns; the investments IN the IRA produce these returns. An IRA is like a basket which holds these investments.

This is a great, quick read on what to do once you open an IRA. In my initial investment research I found a lot on what a Roth IRA is, but very little on what to actual invest with it.

The reported rate of inflation is a lie

I’ve been reading and learning about the Consumer Price Index (CPI), otherwise known in layman’s terms as the ‘rate of inflation.’ The CPI is calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and is reported periodically (monthly is the most common number quoted). The original idea of the CPI was to periodically collect the prices for a basket of consumer goods in order to gain information on price increases or decreases.

I knew the basics about inflation, but never had a clue about how it was calculated. This post goes into those details in a way that is easy to understand, and also points out some flaws with the system.

Quicken Hacks: 25 Hints, Tips, and Tricks

Quicken on the Mac is a pale comparison to the Quicken on the PC. I feel like I should be able to get more out of the program, so I went on a scavenger hunt, scouring the web for the best Quicken hacks. There aren’t many out there. Here are the 24 hints and tips I deemed worth sharing

I am a Quicken addict - I load it and update it at least once a day. So any tips to increase my productivity inside it are always welcome.

Why Aren’t Money Managers Paid Purely On Performance?

nstead of a flat fee, you choose the investments, and you get to keep 80% of how much you beat a benchmark portfolio where I try to match your level of risk using index funds. If you fail to beat my portfolio, you must pay me back the difference. So let’s say an advisor would charge 1% of assets. All they would have to do is beat the market consistently by 1.25%, and they’ve got that made already. If they kick butt and beat the market by 5%, they get 4% of assets!

This is a question I often asked myself when first learning about mutual funds. It was partially answered by reading Confessions of a Street Addict (read my impressions here), but this post brings up that question again.

I am happy to say I was able to participate in my first Carnival of Personal Finance this week, which is number 100 for them. I have to say I love the concept of a traveling blog carnival.

In any case, they included my article on electronic fund transfers, some knowledge I thought was important to share with other readers and bloggers. Here are some other entries I found interesting or useful:

• My investments highlight my dual personality: Something I can identify with!
• I got diet pills for $109, but never ordered them: In a similar vein to my article on EFT’s, Clever Dude talks about being charged for diet pills that he never ordered. In the end, the payment was reversed and he got his money back, but had to get a new card in the process. Chalk this up for another example of why I prefer credit cards!
• We’re Hemorrhaging Money - A Good Time For The Emergency Fund: This gives a story of the actual use of an emergency fund, and lays out two simple rules for when it’s ok to pull money out of it.