Jeremy Coenen

Well I kept thinking about what I am going to do for my blog. While I am a computer geek and I guess a jock (trust me that doesn’t happen very often if you have ever seen a computer programmer), but really if I were to write about techy stuff it probably would not be of interest to most of the people who I would envision reading this blog (my family/friends). Also while I enjoy playing/watching sports there really isn’t anything that is too interesting that I could provide that you couldn’t read on ESPN and besides at the ripe old age of 26 I am pretty sure my days as a jock are coming to an end pretty fast.

I have a 6 month old son who should provide loads of excellent material, but he already has his own blog Do you You Know Jack where he can tell you first hand what’s going on, which is another blog that has been lacking.

I’d talk about my wife and or family but that would most likely get me in trouble so I will probably stay clear of that area.

Another area that I am pretty fond of is personal finance and think I’ve learned quite a bit about in the last few years that may be interesting to read/discuss so there is a good chance I will try to bestow the virtues of starting investing as young as possible and how to go about doing it as this is in my opinion probably one of the most foreign topics to a lot of people and something that they are never taught while in school. Not that I am a financial wizard or have even been overly successful in dealing with my personal finances and investing, but I think I’ve learned a lot over the last couple years that might be useful for other people to know.

Another cool idea a long these lines is starting my son’s college/retirement savings fund and tracking his net worth, this is done on a couple other blogs I’ve run across and is a pretty cool idea. Check out Financial Baby Steps . The only problem with this is that well Jack isn’t worth a whole lot at this point in time $242.14 and all of his money is sitting in a boring savings account getting 3.5% interest so he’s increasing his net worth at about 71 cents a month. Oh yeah he does also have 2 $50 savings bonds that he received at birth. So there wouldn’t be much to update on and I don’t plan on contributing a whole lot to his net worth anytime soon as the cash flow meter in the Coenen’s household is not exactly off the charts and most of the extra money that comes in will be going to my retirement instead of Jack’s college/retirement (sorry Jack - but more on that later).

There are also people who track their retirement savings MillionDollarGoal and ListofPersonalFianceBloggers which too is a cool idea and a great learning tool, but I am not exactly sure I want divulge my entire net worth to everyone. Not that I really have a problem divulging this information as really all it is a scorecard on how you manage your finances and I think for the most part it would do people more good to be more open about their finances and discuss them with others so that they can learn from each other. I think the secrecy about money and how its impolite to ask how much someone makes or how much their house costs or stuff like that is one of the primary reasons there are so many people running around out there that don’t have a clue about money. They were taught that its impolite to talk about money and that people who do are greedy snobs, but then people don’t understand why 90%+ of people out there don’t have a clue (gee how are kids ever suppose to learn about money if its never talked about).

Anyway I guess there are still a couple of reservations about divulging a majority of my finances on this site.
1. People will think I am bragging about how wealthy I am (which I assure you if I put my financials up right now would not be the case).
2. If people knew I was filthy rich from my investments (see #1 first - they might treat me different or expect something from me)
3. I believe if I signed something at my job that if divulge my salary my employer might have the right to fire me (which I don’t think is necessarily legal, but I like my job and really don’t want to get fired)

Regardless personal finance is something that really perks my interest and I think there are a lot of topics that can be discussed and I’d like to document some of my thoughts somewhere to maybe spark a discussion with someone to maybe learn a better way to do something and observe how my thoughts have changed over time, for example I might think it was wrong not to save for Jack’s college fund vs saving for my retirement.

Other than the kid and finance I am pretty sure the rest of my posts are likely to be all across the board on various topics.