Bosendorfer Strauss Grand Piano

The Bosendorfer Strauss Grand Piano – A Real Life Lesson in the Time Value of Money

From the time I was a kid and had only a few thousand dollars in the bank, I have wanted a Bosendorfer Strauss model grand piano, probably in a 7 foot size (which is comparable to a Steinway & Sons Model B semi-concert grand). Yet, the list price is $111,080 plus you’d be looking at sales tax of roughly $8,331 for a grand total of $119,411. The time value of money opportunity cost of buying a Bosendorfer Strauss grand piano, then is enormous.

Our Value Investing Research Process for Stocks

Our Value Investing Research Process for Stocks

A week or two ago, I wrote an article called Understanding Stock Repurchase Plans for About.com, a division of The New York Times, which discussed Sonic Restaurant and the massive stock buy back program that had taken place over the past few years. In it, I walked the readers through a lot of the math and explained that I had purchased a couple hundred shares to watch and monitor the stock through one of my companies, Mount Olympus Awards, LLC.  (I’ve since increased it to about 500 shares to continue watching and waiting to see how events unfold).

Paying for Your House with Dollar Cost Averaging

Paying for Your House with Dollar Cost Averaging

A family member recently used dollar cost averaging and the power of compounding in such a creative way, that I thought it would be useful to share it.  This technique, which he developed after studying the various returns available on different asset classes, was designed to show that two factory workers, both earning the same salary, paying the same taxes, and having the same expenses, could end up with vastly different levels of wealth based on what they did with their surplus cash each month.  Let’s take a look at this dollar cost averaging technique and how he hopes it will help him earn several extra hundred thousand dollars in profit over the coming decades.