“Opinions are for show, numbers are for dough”

Don’t you love that? It’s one of Minneapolis money manager and researcher Steve Leuthold’s phrases, which he shared at the group’s annual luncheon today. Leuthold runs six mutual funds, but is best known for the research that drives the investment decisions behind the funds.

Leuthold is about as down to earth as you get. He started his group’s annual meeting, which was held on the 50th floor of the IDS Center, with an anecdote about how the reason he’s not wearing a suit is because he went to China, gained 8 pounds and can’t button any of his suit pants.

Then again, that’s the kind of thing you expect from a guy whose team named one mutual fund the Undervalued and Unloved Fund with the ticker UGLYX and has a pricey monthly research report that features reader-submitted jokes.

Have you heard the one about the– gosh, I seriously was just looking through their reports and the jokes are either super crass or novel-length. OK, here’s one, titled “You Gotta Love the Irish:”

At a U2 concert in Ireland, Bono (the lead singer) asks the audience for some quiet. Then he starts to slowly clap his hands. Holding the audience in total silence, he says into the microphone…

“I want you to think about something. Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.”

A voice from the back of the audience yells out…”Then stop yer clapping, ya wanker!”

But seriously, here are a few things of note that Leuthold and friends said today:

They are currently “neutral” on the stock market, meaning the money they manage is 50 percent invested in equities. Leuthold explained that sometimes you just have to wait for the market to reveal its direction. If we could all be so disciplined.

Leuthold thinks we’ve been in a recession for two quarters now despite the official GDP numbers. He called the use of inflation figures that don’t include food or energy prices as “a big joke” and a “seriously flawed” approach. I can’t disagree.

He said based on the historical length of a recession, which is between 11 and 16 months, the time to buy stocks will come about as early as next month, or maybe in August.

He also predicted that interest rates are on the up and up.

And that despite that fact that Wall Street has “gotten through the sub-prime slime,” it’s not time to buy big commercial banks yet (although regional banks look pretty good).

I’ve always struggled with regular exercise. Once I’m doing it, it feels great. But if I’m not already donning gym shorts and tennis shoes, I’m more likely to reach for a drink or hang out than hit the running trails.

So…a few weeks ago I wrote about Stikk.com, which helps you to keep your commitments by pledging money to a person or a cause. Read the entire post here.

I said I’d exercise four days a week. I knew it was going to be tough. At first, I ran in the rain, got up at 5 am twice a week and did all I could to ensure that none of the readers who signed up to accept my failure money got a cent. But then I went to LA for a wedding and spent more time sitting by the pool than swimming in the pool. Last week, I made it to three times, but not the fourth.

So…I lost $40 because I pledged $240 for 12 weeks and have $20 on the line each week. And I randomly picked a winner from the people who emailed me to receive my money. Congrats Soren24! I’ll pick another winner if I fail again. To get in on the action, send an email to kara@startribune.com with the subject line: Stikk.

I only ran once so far this week which means I have to work out today through Sunday or I owe more dough.

I really thought I was so cheap that this incentive thing would work. But I’m learning that when time and money are competing as precious commodities, time can win out.

Well, I didn’t get mine yet. But plenty of others have shared how they decided to use theirs at the web site: HowIspentmystimulus.com.

Now why didn’t I think of that?

The photo-posts tell stories about everything from people spending money to travel to the World Beard and Moustache competition (seriously?), to buying an As Seen on TV pancake puff pan, to taking a puppy to the vet for a “particularly messy case of giardia.”

Interspersed with the impulse buys, travel plans, and medical bills (oddly the majority of medical bills were for animals), are mentions of paying down debt. Not much saving going on.

It’s one of those sites that can suck you in, so be careful. My only wish is that you could sort stimulus use by location and map out the pix to see if anyone else in your hood is heading to that beard competition. Then you could caravan.

Two new reports on 18-29 year-olds came out today from public policy groups Demos and American Progress.

The message that came out of the joint press conference the two just held is that the younger generation is strapped, that they are progressive and willing to pay higher taxes for things such as universal health care and cheaper college tuition, and that the government needs a new deal.

Tamara Draut, who also wrote a book about the topic a couple of years ago called “Strapped: Why America’s 20 and 30-something’s Can’t Get Ahead,” blames lower wages and the rising cost of college and housing for the “fragile” state of young Americans, who will be lucky if they can “work or educate their way into middle class.”

She backs the points up with stats galore, all which can be found in the report. I encourage you to take a look.

For example, since the 1970’s, the median earnings for young workers ages 25 to 34 have declined for men and women at all education levels except for young women with bachelor degrees—those wages have increased by 10 percent.

Student loan debt is “dampening the ability to build assets and even make jump to home ownership,” said Draut. The average grad leaves with nearly $20,000 in student loan debt; in Minnesota it’s $23,375.

And four in 10 in this generation spend more than a third of their income in rent compared to 18 percent of 18-29 year-olds in 1970 and 30 percent in

I’m a member of Gen-X. And while I listened to the call, I was reminded of an entire genre of slacker fiction by authors such as Douglas Coupland that came out. The stories starred disenfranchised young adults who also complained about poor job prospects and other financial woes.

And while I glanced through the report I was struck by how much other age groups have also lost ground. Grandma’s with too much credit card debt? Sadly, yes. Is economic suffering really divided by age?

What do you think? Do you feel as if the deck is stacked against the under-30 set? Are you a poster-child for these reports, or exactly the opposite?

Geez, I always feel like I’m apologizing for not updating poor Ka-Blog as much as I’d like. Believe me, the ideas are stacked to high heaven, but finding the time to write is always the challenge.

This week, on top of my writing for the paper, my parents have been in town in search of a house. They’ve decided that they’d like to retire near the grand kids and miraculously sold a house in the Detroit suburbs in little time. As an editor of mine said when I told him the news, “the housing market has hit bottom.” We’ll see….

So they’re searching for a new abode and told me something I found extremely interesting and annoying– lenders don’t like to make small mortgages. According to their mortgage broker, lenders will charge a higher rate for loans that are less than $70,000. So he suggested they take out a loan that big and invest the rest. Uh, no thanks.

The other thing they can do is “recast” the loan, which means pay off a chunk of the mortgage with some of the cash they’ll have from their home sale, and then have the lender re-amortize the payments so they have smaller payments based on the new loan amount. But the lender will charge for this, of course– a couple hundred bucks according to my Dad.

Any mortgage experts out there who can explain to me why a mortgage company won’t take out a smaller loan without charging an interest rate premium, except because they are greedy?

Another thing to complain about while I’m exercising that muscle? Those credit card checks that come in the mail. These checks are coming fast and furious to my address these days. Is that because creditors know that the more strapped Americans feel, the more they might be tempted or might need to use the checks? Or are creditors worried that people are going to charge less these days and want to entice with teaser rates?

I don’t know, but these checks to me are invitations for identity theft and credit scams, sitting there in mailboxes just waiting to be used. In a perfect world, credit card companies would have to ask me if I want these checks. My answer would always be, uh, no thanks!

For those of you who aren’t sure if you’re receiving a rebate or exactly how much to expect, here’s a handy tax rebate calculator from Kiplinger’s.

And if you’ve forgotten about when approximately your pay day is, check out the following IRS chart. They’re about a week ahead of schedule, I believe:

Stimulus Payment Schedule for Tax Returns
Received and Processed by April 15

Remember, you have to have filed your tax return to get a payment. If you’re late, it will take about six weeks from when you file to get your payment in hand, or later if you aren’t direct depositing.

Us media folks have really been singing the blues for the past three months, reporting grim economic indicator after depressing consumer confidence survey as evidence that the debt-funded party is O-V-E-R and we’re staring at some tough financial times.

For a while I resisted believing that the economy is in the tank. My informal economic polls of friends, co-workers–really anyone who would take it– indicated that for the most part people were fine personally, although admittedly a little scared by all the depression recession mumbo jumbo.

But despite my informal poll results, I eventually succumbed to recession fever after reading gloomy story after gloomy story and reporting out a fair number that failed to come to a definitive conclusion about the health of our pocketbooks.

Perhaps not knowing is even more terrifying than knowing just how bad things are. It’s the feeling that there’s a monster under the bed, but he hasn’t reached his hand out to grab us–yet.

Now there’s proof that there’s been no recession so far. Our economy grew slightly in the first quarter, like it did in the last quarter. Pretty darn slow, but still in positive territory.

In other news, the Federal Reserve’s committee also lowered interest rates by a quarter point today, to 2 percent. The committee’s statement was peppered with words like “uncertainty” “subdued” “weak” and “softening.” They were careful to avoid the “r” word. You know, recession. But clearly the troops are on alert.

What do you think? Do you think the country avoided the “r” word in the first quarter but we’re in the midst this quarter? Does it even matter if we’re officially in a recession or not if we’re hunkering down as if we are?

Hello. I’m back from sunny California, the land of heavenly weather, wonderful scenery, heavy traffic, $3.93 gas and $5.99 almonds (they were only $3.99 back home on the tundra).

Apologies to those of you whose comments were stuck in moderation all weekend. And stuck in the rain/snow.

Many thanks to brilliant budget bride Aimee for holding down the fort.

I didn’t pay much attention to the money news when down in the valley. It was a vacation, after all. But I did notice a few stories about retailers offering deals to shoppers who use their stimulus checks to stimulate their earnings– and the economy.

As my colleague Jackie Crosby reported today, Lands’ End, Kmart, Sears, Roundy’s (Rainbow), and Cub are offering discounts to those of us who spend our rebate with them.

What if your rebate will be directly deposited into your bank account? Cub spokeswoman Haley Meyer said that Cub “will work with shoppers” who “show us proof” that the rebate was deposited. The proof needed is a copy of your bank statement or print-out of your online bank account. My guess is other retailers will also accommodate e-deposited funds.

I don’t know about you, but I’m planning to milk the “spend $300, we’ll give you $30 deal” that Cub announced and Rainbow matched.

Here’s my reasoning: I spend about $100 in groceries each week. Yes, that’s a lot of money tied up in grocery gift cards if I throw in the entire $1,800 my family expects. Yes, it will take me almost five months to use up those gift cards, but that’s a free $180–almost two weeks of groceries.

Tell me this: Where else can you get a risk free rate of return of 10 percent on your money in five months? Certainly not in an online savings account with the Fed expected to lower rates once again. Not in a CD. Not under my mattress. Not in short-term bonds. This is about the best short-term investment around. And if they’ll let me use my credit card that earns me 6 percent back on groceries to buy the gift cards, I’ll earn another $108.

Milk it? You bet.

On the scale of importance, most brides will tell you that their wedding dress ranks pretty high, if not at the top.

When I was dress-shopping, I didn’t see the logic in spending a mortgage payment’s worth of money on a dress I’d wear for a few hours. I kept myself from getting tempted to spend more than my budget and firmly told the person helping me at the bridal store that I didn’t even want to try on the expensive dresses.

It took a long time to find “THE” dress. When it finally arrived, the sizing of the dress was WAY off. We shipped the dress back to the manufacturer, hoping that it was defective and the new one would arrive and fit perfect. Nope. Same problem. By this time, I didn’t feel comfortable starting the dress search over, so we ordered another dress, only 8 sizes larger than my actual dress size.

When that dress arrived, it fit where it didn’t fit before, but would have to be taken in everywhere else. I accepted that I was finally being punished by the bridal Gods for being cheap, and I’d have to shell out the cash for some major alterations.

Then I’m standing in front of the mirror in my wedding dress, with 3 months until the wedding, and I notice something awful. I could see right through the fabric of the dress! I tell myself, “Take a deep breath Aimee, don’t be a bridezilla … I’m sure a lot of brides have see-through wedding dresses… right?” Then I snap out of it and realize that although I didn’t drop a grand on the dress, I spent plenty and deserved a dress that covered me up.

As most things do with a wedding, everything turned out OK. The bridal store relined the entire dress for next to nothing and it’s no longer R-rated. The fact that I paid almost as much for alterations as I did for the dress will probably gnaw at me until I get into the dress on my wedding day. After that, it will just be one of those hilarious wedding dress-gone-wrong stories.

Hello, Aimee Blanchette here filling in for Kara who is in L.A. with her family for a wedding. Peak wedding season is officially upon us.

I contributed to KaBlog several months ago when I was in the early stages of planning my own wedding. Now I have just two months to go before the BIG DAY. The invitations have been sent and a few nights ago we finished bottling our second batch of wedding wine … yes, wedding wine.

Among all the other things on our plate, we somehow managed to talk ourselves into making our own wine to serve at the wedding. Here me out, though: doing so saved us money, we had fun together, the wine tastes darn good AND it fits our overall “theme” for a homemade wedding.

The idea came about when my future father-in-law (an avid home-brewer) offered to brew the beer for the wedding (he just finished his seventh batch of wedding brew). For a long time, I’d wanted to try making wine, but the whole process was really daunting. Would I have to ship in grapes, stomp them with my feet and let them age in oak barrels?

I looked into the process, talked to some people at the local wine/brew stores and realized I could make a high-quality wine for about the same cost of a bunch of “Three-Buck-Chuck.”

The process is actually pretty fool-proof IF you follow the instructions provided with the wine ingredient kit. There are a few places in the Twin Cities where you can find everything you’ll need to make wine from beginning to end. Northern Brewer is in St. Paul and Brew & Grow is in Spring Lake Park.

A basic wine-making kit costs $100 and includes all of the supplies you’ll need, minus the bottles and corks. We didn’t have to buy this kit, because we already had a beer-making kit, which includes many of the necessary supplies. We only had to supplement the beer-making kit with a few items.

Here’s a breadkdown of the estimated cost-savings:
Supplies (tools, cleaners and sanitizers, and corks) = $65
Recycled bottles = free
Wine ingredient kits = $225 for three kits

Total = $290

Each wine ingredient kit (which includes a juice concentrate, not grapes) costs between $55 and $165. Each kit makes 6 gallons of wine, or 30 bottles.

We made 90 bottles of wine for $290, or $3.22 per bottle. It was a lot of work, but totally worth it and it saved us a ton of money. If you are planning to make wine for your own wedding, start early. The earlier the better. We started the process about six months ago.

So readers, what lengths have you gone to save money for your wedding (or any other big event) and was it worth it? Later today, I have a story to share about how trying to be thrifty, or shall I say … cheap, backfired BIG TIME. And it has to do with my wedding dress.