Every Apple announces a new product, the capitalist in me says “run to the Apple store tomorrow. Buy as many as you can carry, and re-sell them on eBay. With the profit, keep one for yourself basically free”. Like this guy who bought ten of ’em (not the blogger, the guy in the picture)! And when I was in college I very might well have does that. But now as a working stiff I just can’t spend 3 hours in line to buy toys. I do have an silver Apple iPod Mini that I got for Christmas, which is awesome.

Apple’s new iPod shuffle (retail $99) now has a 2-4 week wait time, and the average going price on eBay is $140. That’s a swift 40% profit, even with the fees since shipping is usually about $10 and costs $4.

If I bought 10 iPods x $40 = $400. If the line was 4 hours long, that’s still $100/hour, which is definitely more than I make. Still, I’d have to take time off work, and I value vacation time at more than $100/hour! Now if I bought 100…

As blogging continues to grow, so do financial blogs – just check out my expanding list of links on the right. And happily so, I do enjoy other people’s views on things and opinions, from Canadian to Urban Woman to Technical Traders. However, there are now so many blogs to follow it’s getting a bit cumbersome. Enter: NewsGator Online. I used to use a free standalone RSS Reader and then MyYahoo to organize things, but NewsGator works on any computer (even my filtered and monitored work computer) and is better organized than MyYahoo or Bloglines in my opinion.

You can rate your posts to save for later, and also check off after you’ve read a post. If you’re tired of clicking around and managing 20 bookmarks, give it a try! The basic service is free for now, and I hope it stays that way.

Ok, so my plan for this blog is to keep track of my steps towards financial freedom. I am still working on what constitutes “financial freedom”. Right now I’m looking at a sum of money, such that I can live off of the earnings without touching the principal. One of the inspirations for this site, PFBlog.com, has chosen a goal of $1,000,000 by age 40. After reading an article at MSN Money, getting a solid number sounds complicated.

Still, let’s try some super-simplified calculations. Let say you want $60,000 a year after retirement, ignoring what you get from Social Security and pensions (a term that will probably go with the dinosaurs). A fair rate for return is 4%, with fixed income-type securities. So that leaves you with needing $1,500,000. Sounds like a crapload of money, huh? Well, hopefully not, but that’s another entry.

Whew! I finally installed Movable Type. Now to get some sleep…

(My first post! December 6th, 2004.)