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Happy Saint Patrick’s Day all!

Saint Patrick is, of course, Ireland’s patron Saint. He’s revered in Ireland, but he’ll be lauded throughout bars and pubs around the world today.

In reality, the saint’s life wasn’t really a bar tour. In fact, his life was pretty tough.

He had been a slave. He was abused. And then he took on one of the biggest and baddest assignments a priest at that time could imagine–he had to preach in Ireland, a wild land full of wild people who didn’t take kindly to outsiders.

And you thought you had it bad.

But Saint Patrick persevered and went on to conquer the Emerald Isle, at least spiritually speaking. His life may also offer us some ideas to conquer our own wild lands of personal finance.

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Dreams Come True, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success, US Economy budgets, holidays, Ireland, Irish, miracles, patience, personal finance, saint, saint patrick, saving, wealth

Passive income is often touted as a work-free, pain-less, time-agnostic way to earn money.

The logic goes like this: You employ a few vehicles that can earn money on a 24-7 basis. You can invest and earn money through trading or dividends. You can create a blog or web site. You can do some affiliate or search engine marketing.

And, alakazam, you make money.

It works. Or, it can work.

But passive income does require four distinct phases that do require your attention and due diligence.

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Greece implodes!

California teeters!

States withhold tax refunds!

I’m not sure about you, but I’m starting to call the second decade of the 21st century, the “Exclamation Point Decade.” Bad, scary news is reported 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The breathless fear seems to increase with every headline and news segment.

Why should I be any different. I recently read some statistics at CNN Money that are pretty fear-inspiring. (As always, I have a sunny spin on it…)

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Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, US Economy CNN Money, personal finance, savings, spending, spending habits, statistics, stats

With St. Patrick’s day just a wee bit away, we wanted to explore ways to live a rich, good life.

The Irish are known for their pluck and–except for the potato famine here and there–their luck.

But I don’t think it’s some smilin’ leprechaun that endowed the people of the Emerald Isle with their ability to be fortunate. It’s really the typical Irish resilient, inquisitive outlook on life that opens up opportunities.

And. you don’t have to be Irish to have good luck. Luck is a matter of being aware of opportunities and seizing them. And both of those skills–awareness and bold action–can be taught, or at least reinforced.

In this edition of Weekly Wisdom, we’ll cover some tips from the blogosphere that will teach you to make your own luck–whether it’s thinking like Albert Einstein or picking stocks.

Here goes:

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Internet, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success fortune, Irish, Links, luck, lucky, Money, rich, roundup, St Patrick's Day, tips, wealth

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The Wealth Singularity is a point when the power of technology has become so massive that wealth and abundance becomes ubiquitous.

The theory is based on the works of leading futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge, who believe that the exponential growth in computing power will lead to a Singularity. Technology, whether it’s the wheel or the personal computer, also leads to a leap in productivity and the ability to generate wealth.

That Singularity may be closer than you think.

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This isn’t New Agey hocus-pocus, necessarily.

This is reality.

The things you think about. The things you believe. The things you read and watch. The things that make you confident and the things that make you fearful are the very foundation of wealth generation–on a lot of levels.

The pricing of stocks and other assets reflect beliefs about their value. These beliefs aren’t just the thoughts and opinions of analysts and big-time market movers, they reflect your ideas, too. Now, your personal belief may just represent a fraction of that price, but when merged with the collective sense, you have mass market psychology.

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Conventional wisdom is usually not conventional and not really wise. It’s often an agreed-upon lie, at worst, or an excuse to keep trying to do the same things over and over again.

It’s a mass-thinking rut, often.

You can find examples of conventional wisdom everywhere–at work, at schools, and at the town hall. But, if you really want to see conventional wisdom at work, check out the world of investments and personal finance.

How can you tell when conventional wisdom is at work? When you hear the same debate or argument over and over again, chances are you’ve stumbled on a conventional truth.

Conventional wisdom doesn’t have to be a thought that is believed by all of  the population. Different groups have different conventional truths. Ironically, these bits of conventional wisdom can be exactly opposite of someone else’s conventional truth.

And the other problem with conventional wisdom is it leads to fatalism. You believe the conclusion of a certain “truth” is writ in stone, simply because it’s the conventional truth of so many people.

An open mind is the cure for conventional wisdom.

Here’s one way to exercise that open mind and break through the walls of conventional wisdom.

What you do is to define some challenges that are part of conventional thought–things you hear in the mainstream media, or talk about with your friends. Then, write down some options that will contradict their conclusions, or change the game entirely. Try to make them positive. Here are some of mine:

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Business Strategy, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success, US Economy conventional wisdom, economy, personal finance, rich, truths, wealth, wisdom

Home of Grace Groner, secret millionaire

It’s hard to be a buy and hold investor in this economic condition. We’ve seen major companies get bailed out, or evaporate like a pool of water on a hot summer day.

But think what it was like to be a buy-and-holder in 1935, the depths of the Great Depression. That’s when Grace Groner spent $180 on three shares of her employer’s stock. Over the next seven decades, those shares in Abbot Laboratories split many times and she reinvested the dividends, too.

And guess how much she ended up with when she passed away in January?

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Stafan Baudy @ Flickr

Personal finance is really about asking the right questions.

Should you buy and hold? Should you sell and walk away?

How much should you save?

How much should you spend?

What’s the best investment?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers to all those questions–but a lot of smart bloggers and columnists do. And I’ll let them do the talking in this week’s edition of Weekly Wisdom.

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Business Strategy, Internet, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI, Success Investing, Links, Money, personal finance, questions, roundup, saving, wealth

pic by dizznbonn via Flickr Creative Commons

The trader’s Catch 22 is that high risk can lead to high returns. Oh, and high risk can also lead to devastating losses.

But the great trading dilemma is to figure out  how much return you’ll receive for the risks you take. One way to estimate this risk-reward ratio is by using the Sharpe ratio.

The Sharpe ratio is named after Nobel-prize winning economist William Sharpe.

The  ratio is calculated by subtracting the risk-free rate – such as that of the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond - from the rate of return for a portfolio and dividing the result by the standard deviation of the returns.

This may sound a little complicated, but compared to other ways of determining risk, the Sharpe Ratio is a snap.

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