Benjamin Bryan | Blogging from North Idaho
Investing and Money Management
Despite being a millionaire Dee-1 still drives the same car, his old 1998 Honda Accord with 300,000 miles on it.
Despite being a millionaire Dee-1 still drives the same car, his old 1998 Honda Accord with 300,000 miles on it.
A cryptocurrency that’s actually productive! I came across Gridcoin (Ticker: GRC) the other day. Gridcoin helps with cancer and malaria research as well as studying astronomy and solving math problems. It caught my eye because Bitcoins and most cryptocurrencies require miners to spend a lot of computing power mining hashes that aren’t really useful. Some argue that … Continue reading “Gridcoin Mining for Science”
I suppose sending the actual statement as an attachment in an email isn’t an option? If security is a concern encrypt it to my PGP key.
We’ve been using Ting for Kris’s phone the last 3 years, it’s been great (see my Ting Review)–but at our new house Sprint’s signal isn’t that good–it can’t really pull in a 3G signal consistently. In rural North Idaho the best coverage is indisputably Verizon, so I limited my search to Verizon MVNOs which have … Continue reading “TracFone on Verizon MVNO Review”
It’s that time a year again to report on the annual costs. I was a little behind this year so “2014” is from June 2, 2013 to June 30, 2014. In October of 2013 we acquired a 2003 Subaru Outback so I’ve started to track that as well. So far it’s looking like an average … Continue reading “Total Cost of Ownership for the Honda-CRV and Subaru-Outback”
Energy Efficient and Quiet Trying to cut down on the noise and power usage of my old AMD Radeon 6870 (which uses about 130 Watts idle and 250 under load) I upgraded my GPU to the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti (~$150 depending on model), I decided on MSI’s version which has a massive heatsync and dual … Continue reading “GPU Mining with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti Overclocked”
Dear Intuit, I’ve been a long time Quicken user, my dad taught me to use Quicken for DOS to track money in my “Bank of Dad” account. My current Quicken file which I started in college after opening my bank account has data back since 2001. For the last 12-years I’ve loyally purchased a new … Continue reading “Quicken 2014. Horrible.”
We switched to Ting from Virgin Mobile… here’s my quick review: What is Ting? Ting was started by Tucows in 2012, like Virgin Mobile it’s an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) backed by Sprint wireless. Ting’s marketing point is that most people don’t actually use all the data, texting, and voice that they pay for. … Continue reading “Meet Ting. New cell phone service challenging Virgin Mobile”
For Year 2013 (June 2, 2012 to June 1, 2013). Notes: I think $0.56/mile is pretty good for city driving. Insurance went down (for reduced mileage maybe?), we ended up getting a credit so some of 2012 should be allocated to 2013. Service has been our biggest expense. This year was new tires, … Continue reading “Honda Total Costs 2013”
Gas Price History from GasBuddy.com Vanguard Energy ETF (VDE) History from Google Finance Fuel prices at the pump are highly correlated with energy sector index funds (which invest primarily in oil since that’s the way the energy market is weighted) so if you want to smooth out your fuel budget you can do your … Continue reading “DIY Hedging Gas Prices”