Real Estate Peeping Tom

www.zillow.com was featured in Fortune Magazine recently.

Zillow gives you comparative data on what every single house in your neighborhood sold for. It uses a lot of satellite photos to display pricing according to cities and does an absolutely great comparative analysis with other homes. Think Google Maps meets MLS.

It could make real estate agents redundant. You can price your home according to recent market conditions in your neighborhood, city and region and it offers an estimate of what your home would sell for in today's market.

Its only available in the U.S. right now. Check it out.

Investment Advice?

I am finding that the worse way to receive investment information or advice now a days is to tune into the media.

At the end of the day, what is the purpose of every newspaper company, media website and television station? It is to get you to tune in and/or buy something (from them or their advertisers). In order to get us to do that in this multi-media world, every little story is turned into an over-blown event and, when events have a direct impact on our financial lives, they become doubly big events.

For example, the Dow Jones fell 416 points today due to fears of a global slow-down. Its the lead story on Yahoo and I suspect it will be on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow. Most of the big names dropped today on the Dow; talk has started about sell-offs of stocks etc. etc. Analysts have commented on this being the beginning of a correction etc. etc.

But let's step back for a minute- if China slows down (which started the sell-off) does its economic growth go from 9% to 7% (I don't have the stats but the point is it goes from high to pretty high)? That is still a great growth rate. If you continue to be invested in high grade investments, will you continue to make money? I would certainly hope so. Isn't the point of investing to buy low, sell high- isn't this the perfect opportunity to buy quality on the cheap?

But if you take the media at face value and do not dig deeper, you would think that this was 1929 all over again.

The point being taking the media's reporting on money as gospel is seriously harmful to your net worth. Statistics show that people do poorly with their own investments not because of the instruments they invest in (yes, mutual fund can be bad) but because they keep chasing yesterday's winners and cash in and out of investments.

Why do people chase yesterday's winners? They see on the news that they should invest in Savings and Loans (80's), buy tech (90's), buy income trusts and oil (00's) because the media makes it sexy and we all want to be sexy investors right?

Be boring. It will make you financially secure.

Read everything with a grain of salt. At the end of the day, dig beyond the media reports and go to the source- the financial statements, the real estate assessment, the fine print etc. etc. They reveal a lot more than a 500 word article/cloumn could ever do and raw numbers don't tug at your emotions like the media does.

Welcome to Thicken My Wallet

As the title of the blog indicates, this blog is about all things that will thicken your wallet (and I don't mean bills and credit card receipts). It deals primarily with money, finances and, most importantly, the mind-set of money.

I guess what I am aiming for is a Po Bronson meets Warren Buffet blog on money. Money is a very rational thing seen from afar (the Buffet part) but very emotional seen up close (the Bronson thing). I am hoping to fuse the two together since you can't talk about money without feeling something- wish me luck, I tend to go off on tangents!

In my other life, I am a professional who provides advice (I am not a financial advisor nor do I work in the financial industry). I see a lot of different people from different walks of life, of different ages, backgrounds and life paths. More often than not, the only thing tying all these people together is a common wish to attain financial security (or put another way, not to stress about money every single day!). So I learn from observation and I learn from experience- thus, this blog is partially about learning from the experiences of myself and others. There are far brighter and more stable people than me who teach me about dealing with money.

My first observation- here's the one thing I have learned from people who have "made it" (insert your definition of "making it"):

1. Its much simpler than you think.
2. Its counter-intuitive from what popular media and the investment industry may teach you.
3. There is no "magic bullet" solution.

I hope to work out these concepts through the blog. I hope you enjoy reading and, more importantly, participating.