I’ve got a guest post up over at The Digerati Life about how I got interested in personal finance and business. I’d also like to welcome all the reader from over there, and I hope you find this site informative as well. Check out the archives and feel free to subscribe to the feed so you don’t miss anything else.

The following is a guest post from The Rogue League. If you’d like to have a guest post featured, submit an article by email.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn the difference between an earning asset and a depreciating asset, read this story. The article from Reuters is re-published here for your convenience. Enjoy.

By Michelle NicholsNEW YORK (Reuters) - Deal or no deal? A woman’s online bid to find a rich husband in New York earning more than $500,000 a year has caused an Internet stir with a mystery Wall Street banker publicly assessing her hunt for romance as a business deal — and a bad one at that.

This is a guest post from The Rogue League.

There are many ways to invest your money. To me, the stock market has always been the most interesting. I offer a few of my thoughts on investing in stocks here. And since I like fantasy baseball, I’ll offer examples of how these principles would apply in that realm. Note that I’m not actually offering investment advice here, and it’s important to remember that these are general principles– certain situations may require specific actions that go contrary to conventional wisdom.

1) Be Interested - this means to educate yourself on some general economic principles. It means to keep a level of interest in your investments sufficient that you will be aware of all the market forces that can affect it. Ideally, it would be in a company that you are naturally interested in, or perhaps already purchase products from. In terms of fantasy baseball, you have to be aware of what all is going on in major league baseball, enough so that you can make roster moves as needed.

2) Practice Patience - a good stock is a good stock. Hopefully you were able to buy it at a bargain. But perhaps it’s not doing so well right now. In terms of fantasy baseball, if you have Alex Rodriguez on your team, and he hits only .220 in April, would you drop him? You’re not a fool, are you? You keep him, because you know he’ll come around and get you good stats. If you have a good stock, but it’s struggling a bit, give it some time. That’s not to say there aren’t instances where the stock is tanking, and really you just need to get out and cut your losses. Many times, however, people panic prematurely. If you can avoid being one of those guys, you can profit off of them.

3) Embrace Change - sometimes one stock opportunity will have dried up when another is presenting itself. Don’t be afraid to re-evaluate your portfolio and make changes. Indeed, change is a constant in our economy. Our ancestors in the 1920’s could not have dreamed of the internet. However, today’s latest technology will be obsolete tomorrow as new products come to market. How we respond to change is the key. This may seem contrary to #2, but really what it’s saying is, once you’ve made the determination that you’ve been sufficiently patient, now, adapt to the differences. In fantasy baseball terms, once you’ve finally come to the realization that Mike Mussina is simply not, and no longer will be, the player he once was, don’t be afraid to drop him and grab a promising rookie off the waiver wire.

The following is a guest post from The Rogue League:

A lot can be learned about warranties by knowing how they are accounted for. Accounting guidelines don’t require that publicly-traded companies separately disclose how much they spent on warranty expense. They only have to separately disclose their warranty liability if it’s deemed material (i.e. significant), and even then it can be done in the notes to the financial statements, not in the statements themselves.

This is significant because this means these companies can basically very easily hide their warranty expense and liability information from the less than astute investor. Why would they want to hide it? Because of what can be inferred from this information. If a company has a lot of warranty-related expenses, the public will view it as a producer of low-quality products. Conversely, if it’s warranty expenses are low, people will see no need to purchase a warranty from the company. A company doesn’t really want either of these things. They want the public to think they are producers of high quality products and, simultaneously, that they still need some kind of insurance. Because, at the end of the day, that’s all a warranty really is.

That is worth remembering here–that warranties are money-making devices, whether a company just rolls it into the overall purchase price of the product or they make it an add-on purchase. A company offers a warranty only after having determined that payments from customers will exceed the charges they expect to incur on repairs. In other words, the company is pooling the risk of all the individual consumers in such a way that they can offer protection to the individual but still make a profit. This happens, of course, because most people never need to use the warranty, or at least, not use it in full.

I think all of this is worth keeping in mind when deciding about what product to purchase and when considering its warranty situation. If the product is of very high quality, an extended warranty probably isn’t really worth it. you’d just be giving the company more money for no real reason. But, if you place a high value on peace of mind, and you just want to know that it’s there if you need it, then you might decide that a (extended) warranty is worth it. I think the main thing to remember here is that, overall, it’s a numbers game, and the company makes money off the arrangement. the odds are more likely than not, that whatever warranty payments you make, you will get less back in free services from the company.

This is a guest post by the rogue league:

Today I’d like to introduce you to a phenomenon known as corporate laugh. The symptoms of this are not totally unlike what some people know as “the bc laugh” (hands on stomach, knees slightly bent, head leaning back). The purpose is simple: impress people. Corporate laugh is found in job settings, usually when a boss is present among several peons. Most peons don’t want to forever remain in their peon state, and some of them reason that if they make it well known that, indeed, their coworker and/or boss really is that funny, this will help them move up the corporate ladder. The laugher is trying to show that either a) he’s got a great sense of humor, ergo, he’s a team player, or b) he thinks his boss is so hilarious that he’d bend over backwards to please him. Either way, the laugher’s goal is to ultimately win a promotion or some other type of official recognition from a higher-up.

I pose a question: what could possibly be that incredibly funny? Is the boss moonlighting as a stand-up comedian? Does he just do killer routines down at the bar on the weekends? Or is it possible that the coworker slipped into “boss mode” and he’ll just laugh at whatever unfunny piece of rubbish that flies out of his superior’s mouth?

I make a plea to all the corporate laughers out there: take a clue from your fellow coworkers who suddenly go scrambling for their iPod and ear buds upon hearing your screeching/cackling/whatever other annoying style of over-zealous laughter you may use. I don’t personally agree with your brown-nosery tactics, but i acknowledge your right to employ them. Just please do us all a favor, drop it down a few hundred decibels, and let us work in peace and quiet.

The following is a guest post from creasy bear over at The Rogue League.

Hello Fiscal Musers. I am creasy bear, friend of Mr. Limeade, and I’ll be writing a guest post for today. Interestingly, I majored in Accounting, and Limeade majored in Engineering, yet his blog is about financial matters and my blog is about nothing important at all. Go figure. Anyway, onto the post.

Perhaps you have seen commercials that make claims that go something like “work from home and earn six figures!” Or “I quit my job and I only work from home 3 days a week.” Or “now I finally have enough cash to buy 100 of every item on the Arby’s menu.” Whatever. I mean, all these claims could be true. Or, of course, those could just be actors that are getting paid to say that. One of the get rich quick schem… er, business opportunities I’ve seen most advertised on TV (and I watch a lot of TV, so I know) is for a site called 61bigmoney.com. Now, I’m not here to tell you this site is a scam, nor will I say anything negative about the site. I’m just going to give you the facts:

- Nowhere on the site does it mention exactly what the “from home business” actually involves
- According to the site, the key to earning lots of cash from home is contained in “secrets”
- This website offers these “secrets”, and they offer it for FREE (for a limited time)
- This FREE offer is yours by just providing some personal contact information

Now, again, I’m not going to speak specifically about this website. Instead, I’ll just give you my interpretation of certain phrases of words in the English language when they are being uttered out of the mouth of someone trying to sell you something.

- When someone tells you something is great, and that you can make a ton of money doing it, but they won’t actually tell you what you need to do until you first give them personal information, you should be skeptical.

- If someone tells you that the key to making money is contained in a bunch of “secrets” that only he/she knows, he/she is full of crap.

- If said offer is purported as FREE, it isn’t.

- If said offer is purported as “good for a limited time only,” they are trying to pressure you into something by introducing the element of time (you should always feel free to sleep on a matter).

- If something is offered for FREE and all you need to do is just provide contact information, you should realize that, when contacted, you’ll be asked for a credit card number or a routing number to your checking account.

What does all this mean? There’s no such thing as a free lunch. There’s no bucket of “secrets” that someone is going to tell you and then suddenly you’ve got cash out the butt while you’re sitting at home. But there are plenty of people who will take your money if they can convince you to believe that. Simply put, to start your own business, whether it be at home or wherever, it requires a good idea, some education, some capital, and hard work.