Have a great 4th of July! The year is flying by and hopefully you are having a productive and prosperous year. Thanks to all our troops around the world for all you do.

I would be a liar claiming that any of my portfolios are hedged-I have been long forever! However, on Friday I did buy 500 shares of SDS-Ultrashort S&P 500 Proshares. My cost was $58.91 and they closed the day at $59.80 for a gain of $1855.00.
Buying these shares did not hedge my portfolio but it’s interesting to note that instead of a loss for the day of $8065.00 my net loss turned out to be $6210.00

Obviously, every portfolio is different but having not lost an additional 20% was some small comfort in an otherwise ugly day. Take a look at what you might do to lessen the losses in your portfolio because…I don’t think it’s over.

Why do gas stations have a $75 limit on Visa or MasterCard transactions at the pump?
According to stations owners they say they are simply following the policies of Visa and MasterCard, who won’t reimburse them more than $75 per transaction at the pump if there’s a disputed charges or fraudulent card use!

What does MasterCard say:
“It’s the merchants’ decision to limit purchases,” says Visa spokesman Paul Wilke. He adds: “Customers always have the option of paying with the card at the cash register” where its policy differs from the pump.

The $75 limit “ensures merchants and customers are protected from fraud,” says MasterCard spokesman Tristan Jordan.

Visa and MasterCard have no immediate plans to go higher. “It’s something we always look at,” Wilke says.
Thanks to the USA Today for for this lesson-Happy Friday!!

I’m headed to have a barbecue with my family and watch the firework displays. Hope you all have a great holiday and a special Thanks to all our troops around the world!

Hi everyone, sorry for the inconvenience you may have experienced if you came looking for cash flow posts. Someone had hijacked my blog and then Blogger disabled my blog-Ugly. Needless to say, Blogger and Google have the worst customer service-but if you’ve ever had any problems, you know that!
I’ve talked about how Google (goog) has been a very good stock pick for me and my clients, because they throw off so darn much cash. Luckily, they aren’t in the customer service business!
Having my blog hijacked and having blogger disable and lock me out was interesting…but come to find out there were more surprises. In cash flow we trust, my domain name, had expired. Thanks to the caring folks over at Network Solutions who did not transfer it to Go Daddy, as instructed. Fortunately, I caught that and now my domain name is mine again.

Thanks for your patience and support!
Steve Mertz

Will you and your money making idea be the Alex Tex of 2007? You remember Alex, a year ago today he made one million dollars on his website selling pixels! To my amazement, the site is still up-Very cool. I don’t know that I have the creativity of Alex but I hope you do if that is your desire for this year.
One of the money strategies that I have found to be successful over the years is to have a quarterly project. For example, let’s assume you have $10,000 dollars in debt that you want to eliminate this year. You have a very good idea what if any money you will be able to commit from your earnings to eliminate this debt-factor that in and then plan on four special money making projects for the year-one every quarter!

These projects could include consulting, selling items on Ebay, affiliate programs, a second job income etc. If you break it down on a quarterly basis it’s much more manageable and gives you a specific time frame and dollar amount to check yourself on. Give this a try if you’ve never done it. It works and if you have some creative ideas to share with others please feel free to comment! Here is the Million Dollar Idea post from a year ago today! PS Shoot me a link from that PR 7 Alex!

Steve Mertz
The next Big Money idea is…

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When Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” in 1843, he was driven as much by financial desperation as inspiration! The story met with instant success, selling 6,000 copies within a week, and it has never been out of print since.

Dickens wrote the classic tale to pay off crippling debt. Though this story was written more than 150 years ago…People were still making bad decisions about debt. Are we any better off today-Have we learned anything from 150 years of history? Let’s hope so and I look forward to brining you the very best in Cash Flow ideas for the year 2007. This article was sent to me by a reader and the author is Candace Bahr, who is the co-founder of Women’t Institute for Financial Education. I will attempt to get a copy of the entire article-it was clever! Update: Read the article-Learn from the lessons of Scrooge.
Steve Mertz
Does Debt Keep You Awake at Night?

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Cash Flow, Personal Finance, Money