I’ve always been too paranoid to allow utility companies and other billers to automatically deduct their payments from our accounts and / or bill our credit cards. But recently I’ve decided that it’s a good thing to let them auto-charge a credit card, as long as some conditions are met. Here is my thought process.

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This week, one of my younger co-workers and I were having a rare discussion about financial matters when I lamented that I wished I had started investing earlier in my life. He immediately asked “Do you have any advice for me so that I can have a bit of a head start?” Well, I don’t consider myself much of an expert financial planner but I started to spout out thoughts anyway because I really wanted to help him. It didn’t take long for me to realize he wasn’t absorbing much of the content of my acronym-heavy sentences. I had to find a different way.

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Did you know that GE is currently promising an annual dividend yield of 7.35% based on today’s closing price of $16.86? While that’s a pretty high dividend rate right from the start, things look even better if you start to think about GE’s long history of raising the dividend. Admittedly, this is based on assumptions, but it is conceivable you could be earning a 19.07% dividend yield in 10 years if GE maintains its recent 10% annual dividend growth.

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It never fails. The week *after* I decide to take advantage of the Costco sign-up bonus at Sharebuilder ($60 added to your account via code CCOEXECLIST60), I get the new November, 2008 edition of the Costco Connection magazine and there on page 20 is a new $90 account bonus offer!

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After a number of discussions with my wife, we’ve agreed that we are setting our long-term financial goal as the achievement of “Geographic Independence”. We define this as having the ability to go wherever we want, whenever we want, in a comfortable manner, without running into financial problems.

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