As a quick followup to my earlier post on searching for silver coins, I wanted to briefly address the situation with pennies.
As you’re likely aware, pennies used to be primarily composed of copper, though nowadays they’re largely made of zinc.
With the high value of copper, recent years have seen an increasing number of people hoarding not just silver nickels, dimes, quarters, and half dollars, but also copper pennies.
It’s well recognized that your asset allocation should be largely determined by your willingness, ability, and need to take risks.
While your need and ability to take risks are primarily financial, your willingness to do so is largely psychological.
Though you may need to take some risks to meet your financial goals, and you may have the ability to do so (e.g., you’re young and have a secure, well paying job), these things have to be balanced against your risk tolerance. If not, you’re just asking for trouble.
This morning, we awoke to water in the cabinet under our kitchen sink. Not a huge amount, but anything more than none is too much.
Normally, I deal with these sorts of things myself. But this time around, I didn’t.
For starters, I couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong. More often than not, these sorts of things are a simple fix, maybe even just a loose connection. But this time around it seemed like it would be a bigger job.
Yesterday afternoon, my son and I rolled a ton of coins. And while we did so, we checked to see if any were made of silver.
Silver? Yes, silver. In case you weren’t aware, the US Mint used to use a good bit of silver when making plain old coins.
In fact, certain vintages of nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, and even dollar coins were up to 90% silver. As such, the melt value of these coins is significantly higher than their face value.
I’ve never fully understood why some bloggers insist on offering partial RSS feeds. Actually, I do understand. It’s for much the seem reason that websites paginate their content. The goal is to inflate pageviews in hopes of increasing profitability.
So I guess what I’m really saying is that I don’t understand why writers think it’s a good idea to inconvenience their most important asset — their readers. To me, this is incredibly short-sighted. But to each their own.
Anyway, if you follow any sites that offer a partial RSS feed, then you might be interested in FullTextRSSFeed. Simply paste in the feed address, click a button, and… BAM! You’re presented with a link to a full-text version of the feed.
I have no affiliation with this site, I’m just a fan. I hope that you guys find this useful. And don’t worry, I’m not planning on switching to partial RSS feeds.
As a quick followup to my earlier post on the impact of the internet sales tax, I wanted to share with you the list of states that do not (currently) collect sales and use taxes.
As of this writing, there are five such states, including: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon.
But that’s not to say that these states balk at such taxes entirely…
I mentioned the internet sales tax debate in passing about six weeks ago. At the time, the Senate was talking about giving states more power to collect sales taxes.
Ultimately, they wound up voting on a non-binding measure in support of doing just that. And it passed easily, with bi-partisan support.
Since that time, the issue has been gaining steam — to the point that the Senate is expected to vote on the real thing in the coming week. And, given the results of that initial vote, the smart money says that it will pass.
In response to yesterday’s money saving tip, a reader named James e-mailed to warn against making decisions based primarily on price:
“Trust me, there are many things more important than a cheap price. Most people just can’t get this through their heads. I have seen countless people burned by the cheap price mentality.”
In short, I couldn’t agree more. Price is just one of many factors that needs to be considered, and the old saying is quite often true… You get what you pay for.
