Yesterday was the first anniversary of this blog. Kinda. I actually pre-wrote a bunch of posts and quietly posted them on blogger as a soft launch before an official unveiling on this site last year. Since I took down the blogger site, my recollection of the official launch date of this blog is hazy at best 225 plus posts later. This anniversary is equivalent to proposing to your spouse on public transit- everyone tries to forget it and substitutes a better story in its place (”it was a bus, honey, but on the way to the Eiffel Tower…”). Thanks for everyone who has read, linked, commented and provided suggestions over the year. Your support is greatly appreciated.

If I learned one thing in the year of blogging about personal finance, and at the risk of giving the owners of Seinfeld an idea to expand into financial publishing, it is to act like George Constanza.

I better explain.

My favorite Seinfeld episode of all time is the Opposite. George, at this point of the show unemployed and living at home with his crazed parents (”serenity now!”), comes to the realization that every instinct about his life is wrong and he decides, for the course of the episode, to do the opposite of what he would normally do. Of course, this all works out swimmingly for George, cumulating in the greatest pick-up line of all time: “My name is George. I am unemployed and I live with my parents.” He promptly gets a date out of that line/candid admission which leads indirectly to him getting a job with the New York Yankees.

How does this relate to personal finance? Through the course of blogging, I have learned or researched or been taught that almost every conventional truth about personal finance is wrong and the best way to get ahead in many instances is to do the opposite of what you are conditioned to do. The easy example is the often quoted mantra of “buy low, sell high” but think about all the other things we take as conventional wisdom that if we did the opposite we would be better off:

• You have to be fully invested- yet, most value mutual fund managers have upwards of 20% in cash
• You need a million dollars to retire- well, if I had Conrad Black’s life-style
• You can beat the market- really? Most professional can’t, what gives me the edge (yes, I am a new convert to passive investing- subject of a future post)?
• Be active in trading and invest in trends- sitting on your butt on blue-chip stocks would probably do you well over time
• Invest in mutual funds for a safe retirement- your mutual fund company will do well but, statistically speaking, you’ll do worse than the market and you are paying fees for that return
• real estate is the best investment- consider it shelter and no more; statistically speaking, less than 50% of real estate investors polled make money (this pool was taken before the real estate bubble burst)

… and, on and on and on.

I really think there should be a book called “Investing Advice by George Constanza” that applies George’s wisdom in the Opposite by listing all the major investing convention and tests them in a down to earth writing style and gives a verdict of “true” or “the opposite.” Donuts to dollars, I would suspect you see more “the opposite” than “true” verdicts. Just my pie in the sky idea.

Would you buy this book?

Here’s looking forward to another year of blogging. Thanks for reading.

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I am part of Rocket Finance’s carnival of P2P Lending with my post on the regulatory and compliance issues of the P2P lending industry. Thanks for Rocket Finance for hosting.