by Chris Kimble

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by David Merkel

When I read the following article at SmartMoney, I said to myself. “I have done almost as well, I am more diversified, and I am willing to explain more of what I do.”

Truth is, clever investors, or lucky investors can get an attitude, saying that they don’t have to explain themselves to outsiders.  Not a good place to be.  I am not saying that the performance is due to luck but there is a certain amount of respect due to investors for investing with you.

Before I write more, let me state that I respect Allan Mecham.  He manages more money than I do, and has a better track record.  If I were in the shoes of the investors who were analyzing him, I probably would have placed $5 million with him, and would have watched what he did carefully.

Why would I take the risk?  It’s tough to find non-consensus views that make significant money.  I wouldn’t want to make it a huge allocation initially, but I would put a toe in the water to see what he would actually do. ...

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by Marla Brill

Karin Prangley, a 33-year-old Chicago estate planning attorney, attempted to guess her father-in-law’s password to gain access to his business computer after he suffered a debilitating stroke several years ago at age 62. None of them worked.

“At the time he owned a building supply company, and he ran most of the business through his Yahoo e-mail account,” Prangley says. “But he hadn’t left his password with anyone, so the family had no way of accessing the contents. We didn’t know which orders had been filled, what was coming in, who the business owed money to, or who to bill.”

Yahoo would only provide the password with a court order. “As an attorney, I knew that takes at least a month,” Prangley says. “The business couldn’t wait that long.” With important records sealed off, the business lost a significant amount of money and eventually closed.

Computer passwords, increasingly the portals to...

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via International Living

You’ll find lots of climate choice in our top retirement havens for 2012, and a good climate is an important consideration for those who wish to move overseas. In fact, thousands of expats have turned in their snow shovels for good and moved to places where the weather is better.

In places where the weather is warm year-round, not only do you eliminate the need for heavy winter clothes, but you gain in quality of life. Better weather means you’re outside more. And that often translates to “healthier.” Plus it usually means lower utility bills, too.

Best climate in the world: Italy (scored 98/100)

Scoring a country on its climate is difficult, because everyone has their own ideas on what sort weather they enjoy most. But it was Italy’s ability to cater to all tastes that saw it surge to the top of IL’s Retirement Index 2012 in the Climate category.

The weather in Italy is quite different from the stereotypical Mediterranean climate...

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via NewsMax

International investor Jim Rogers said he doesn’t have U.S. stocks or the British pound in his portfolio, which includes euros, dollars, renminbi and precious metals such as gold and silver.

“Everybody’s having a wonderful time running the printing presses,” Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, said in a television interview with CNBC in Singapore. “The way to protect yourself at a time like that, historically anyway, has been to own real assets. Those are my longs, and currencies.”

The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index has gained 8 percent this year, while the S&P GSCI index of 24 commodities has climbed 6.4 percent and gold 11 percent.

Rogers said he expects more currency turmoil as global central banks inject stimulus into the economy through quantitative easing and investors should buy commodities “when that happens.”

“Probably none of us are going to own any paper money at all ultimately, but that’s later in this decade, because paper money is becoming...

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by Joshua M. Brown

The obituary of John Fairfax (who passed at 74 years old on February 8th) has absolutely lit up the internet over this weekend, he is being called the real-life Most Interesting Man in the World by all who read it…

    At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he lit out for the Amazon jungle.

    At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar. Afterward he was apprenticed to a pirate. To please his mother, who did not take kindly to his being a pirate, he briefly managed a mink farm, one of the few truly dull entries on his otherwise crackling résumé, which lately included a career as a professional gambler.

You have to get over there and check this thing out, it’s an amazing life story [continue]…

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by Christine Hauser

In a Wall Street universe populated by marquee name stocks, the lesser known entities are the stars of the rally so far this year.

The Russell 2000 index, which tracks stocks with a small market capitalization, is nearing its record high with a rise of about 11 percent in the year to date. That outstrips the Russell 1000 index that measures Wall Street’s large capitalization stocks and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index that measures the broader market.

The surge in the so-called small-cap stocks — companies whose total share value is $3 billion or less — indicates that investors’ appetite for risk is growing as signs of recovery persist in the United States and euro zone leaders make progress in containing the debt crisis, market participants say.

After investors drained more than $15 billion out of small-cap stocks last year, the largest amount since 2007, they have sunk about $2.4 billion back into those equities so far this...

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Via Reuters

* U.S. goal is to create 100,000 new farmers

* $1.8 billion in U.S. loans to beginning farmers in 2011

* Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota top states for new farmer loans

* Specialty crops, organic food a focus

by Carey Gillam

Dan Pugh wishes he had a bigger tractor and his wife Laura worries about their chickens in the winter weather. But as new farmers putting down roots in rural Missouri, the Pughs are counting on more rewards than regrets in trading their city lives for the country.

A better quality of food and life are among the factors that caused Dan, 47, to leave a career in sales last year and move Laura, 48, and their two young children to 50-acres (20 hectares) of rolling pastureland they call Honey Creek Farm.

The Pughs will plant their first crop of organic spinach and lettuces in the next few weeks on ground they tilled behind the barn they converted into a two-bedroom home. They are shopping for sheep and hogs. And though their first hives of bees mysteriously died, Laura...

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by Marc Hack

Live by choice, not by chance.  Make changes, not excuses.  Be motivated, not manipulated.  Work to excel, not compete.  Listen to your own inner voice, not the jumbled opinions of everyone else.

This is the way to inspire people!  This is how you can grow into the best version of YOU!

Here are a few more ideas to get you started with inspiring everyone around you [continue]...

In light of Google’s latest user-tracking snafu, a guide to leaving behind fewer digital breadcrumbs and fingerprints.

by Quentin Fottrell

Online, everyone’s an open book — and an open wallet. Users increasingly wear their hearts on their screens, and security experts say sites are growing more adept at tracking their every move.

Privacy settings clearly aren’t enough judging from revelations Friday that Google and other advertisers found creative ways to exploit Apple’s Safari web-browsing software.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Google disabled code that allowed it to circumvent privacy settings after being contacted by the paper. In a statement, Google says it didn’t use these “cookies” — little pieces of code stored on user computers or mobile devices that tell a company what sites consumers visit on the web and what they do there.

But this latest episode raises an important question for consumers: Can we...

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