This week I received a long rant from Dan, one our very astute readers. I extracted the following from what he wrote:

Yesterday I received an offer to "Cut My Indebtedness" by shifting over to a bi-weekly mortgage payment, tied to my paydays. The "offer" goes on to show how much I will save over the term of the loan by enrolling in their plan. The kicker is (& here is a reference to an old Country song I remember from years ago, "The Large Print Giveth, What the Small Print Taketh Away") the small print. There is a $9.00 per month "participation fee". A fee to participate? ...my rant. THEY CAN"T STOP YOU FROM MAKING ADDITIONAL PRINCIPAL PAYMENTS.

This has happened to me as well, and if you have lived in your home for a few years or more, it is likely you received a similar offer. Dan raised many valid points in his longer version, but the three main points are that you should focus on the small print, there should not be a fee for paying down your loan, and finally if you have a loan that allows prepayments of the principal amount you can make interim principal payments any time you want.

One feature of bi-weekly payments that Dan overlooks or fails to distinguish, and that homeowners should recognize, is that they reduce the amount of interest you pay over the life of the loan without additional "monthly" principal contributions. That is a real savings, and the bank feels the service of processing this has a cost to them and a value to you. On most loans, the savings of many thousands of dollars would greatly exceed the fee, and the fee does not increase on larger loan amounts. Perhaps it is their presentation of the offer that appears deceitful.

Here is a detailed explanation of bi-weekly payments. The example they give you indicates a savings of almost $58,000 interest on a $75,000 loan. Fees or no fees it provides substantial benefit tothe borrower.

Happy Mothers Day

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money.

In this month' Money Magazine story, Calming words for troubled times the final words were by Deena Katz, Chairman, Evensky & Katz Wealth Management, who shared this "My mom always said, if you're going to do it, don't worry; if you're going to worry, don't do it."

Are you a worrier? Do you fret over everything? Can you undo those things you have already done that you are worried about? Sometimes it's tough. But maybe you should consider it. How does that apply to the stock market or investing in general. From that perspective it is very simple. Do not invest in anything that will keep you up at night.

While this may be good advice for most aspects of investing there is one time that it might cost you. When stocks are rising few people are worried. When stocks are falling everyone's worry factor rises. As their worry factor rises they tend to become sellers. This may relieve one of their worries but it also may relieve them of their money because it contradicts two other old bits of wisdom.

"Buy low and sell high" is a common refrain said tongue in cheek because a bell does not ring announcing the highs and lows. However, even 'my pal Warren' would advise that "investors should buy on fear and sell on greed". So then the modified version of mom's advice melding it with market realities is that you should be worried when others are not and remain calm when everyone else is panicking.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money.

The following story came to me this week from a reader who's sentiments may be shared by a lot folks. If I am the last one on the planet to have seen it and it has been circulating around the web for a long time, please excuse my redundancy.

The story pokes fun at business bureaucracy, mismanagement, corporate fairness, employee relations and more. Finding this type of story more often in your in-box displays a kind of recession fatigue and growing cynicism.

A foreign company and an American company decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the foreign company won by a mile. The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the foreign team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised that too many people were steering the boat while not enough people were rowing.

If you do not receive the annual report from Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) you are probably missing the stock appreciation too, but you do not have to miss "my pal Warren's" charming musings about the company, investing, or the economy.

You can find Buffett's letters on the company website or refer to Everything Warren Buffett for this year's letter, and past years as well. One thing I thought worthy of sharing from the letter was the notion that financial statements require a lot of guess work. Buffett bemoans his concern about having to include a best guess and forthrightly acknowledges it could be wrong. He highlights the difficulty in predicting future costs with the following story.

A story I told you some years back illustrates our problem in accurately estimating our loss liability: A fellow was on an important business trip in Europe when his sister called to tell him that their dad had died. Her brother explained that he couldn't get back but said to spare nothing on the funeral, whose cost he would cover. When he returned, his sister told him that the service had been beautiful and presented him with bills totaling $8,000. He paid up, but a month later received a bill from the mortuary for $10. He paid that, too -- and still another $10 charge he received a month later. When a third $10 invoice was sent to him the following month, the perplexed man called his sister to ask what was going on. "Oh," she replied, "I forgot to tell you. We buried Dad in a rented suit.

Reading through this years Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) annual report, I noticed that the cash float that the company is carrying in it's insurance enterprises has reached $59 billion. As "my pal Warren" explains, this float is free to invest as long as they break even on premiums and claims.

This is one of the many advantages Berkshire has had over other investors for decades, and this allows it to leverage it's returns without the risk that others would have to take to make the same money.

Berkshire does not own the float, but it owns the profits, and the larger the insurance business becomes the more float he has to invest. Adding the $59 billion to BRK's $41 billion of cash and short-term securities means that Buffett is walking around with $100 billion. Except for a few governments, there are not many entities with that kind of financial might.

No matter how much you plan, calculate, speculate and research sometimes you just cannot avoid turmoil and it is going to affect your business. It does not matter what kind of business you're in, you are going to have surprises.

This week when I read Miami Heat forward Shawn Marion out for season with foot injury, I could not help but think how ironic. When the Phoenix Suns NBA basketball franchise traded all-star forward Shawn Marion (and guard Marcus Banks) to the Heat for Shaquille O'Neal I am quite certain that there was unanimity of thought that it was Shaq that would be more prone to injury. He had already missed many games this season and was just coming off an injury right before the trade.

After a very slow (losing) start with the Suns Shaq has done well (ignoring his pitiful free-throw shooting) and they have reversed course over the last ten games. The Suns are still in the same hunt for a Championship they were before, but now with a monster in the middle perhaps giving them greater hope for a storybook ending.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own shares of the Phoenix Suns or Miami Heat , but I am saving up to buy the Los Angeles Lakers.

My collegue Zac Bissonnette posted a story about Societe Generale, the French bank that suffered a $7 billion loss at the hands of a 30-year-old trader. He points out that according to French law, the bank could not fire this big time loser without a formal explanation of the problems they have with his performance. I guess they have no dollar limit. Zac confessed to wanting to be a fly on the wall and I went into my Saturday Night Live alter-ego adding the following:

• You don't need to be a fly on the wall Zac. You know what will be said:

"We find that your performance over the last year has been quite extroadinary. We have never seen or heard of anyone losing $7 billion that was not a government official. This is so far outside of our expectatations that we feel we must put you on notice that should you lose another $7 billion we will be forced to ask for your resignation. However, you should not worry because, as is blatantly obvious the government would probably jump at the opportunity to retain someone of your experience. You would need no training and could start to lose money on the first day."

One of our more commented-on stories, We're too sexy ... per Victoria's Secret's CEO, received some very funny ones. The best one, that I thought showed the wildest mis-characterization of the worlds population, was "supermodels only make up 7% of the world."

Obviously a few decimal places were left out, otherwise we would have 500 million supermodels. I'm not sure anyone has an exact count, but the number is likely less than a hundred, perhaps two. However, this might explain the rash of UFO sightings -- beings from other planets surely would be eager to travel from light years away to do 'meet and greets' in a world where better than 1 in 15 people were supermodels!

I don't know how our readers are doing with their investments, but there are some that clearly need to get a grip on percentages. The following gem of a coment was sent to my colleague Zac Bissonnette's after his post: Congress grills overpaid executives:

"I personally do not feel that any CEO of publicly traded company should receive more than 300% of the lowest paid permanent employee. Private companies they should receive what ever they can."

Two interesting bits of news were released Friday afternoon. First, our government had decided to intercept a descending spy satellite just before it re-enters the atmosphere. They said they were doing this because of "dangerous fuel" but wouldn't this burn up upon re-entry? Then the Defense Department announced that Raytheon Missile Systems, a unit of Raytheon Co. (NYSE: RTN) has won a $1 billion Missile Defense Agency contract boost to make 102 missiles for the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.

Initially this was not enough missiles to help Raytheon's stock, which closed down 1% for the day to $65.65. However, when folks put the stories together in after hours trading RTN jumped 2.5% reaching $67.30 before the trading "pool" was cleared because the "lifeguards" had to go home, spoiling the late night speculators fun.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. To find potential opportunities and verify my track record, read Chasing Value or Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own shares of RTN.

Several weeks have passed and I still can't help thinking about how tough it is to invest in individual stocks and how many ways there are to be blind-sided. When the Board of Citigroup (NYSE: C) finally asked for the resignation of CEO Chuck Prince at an emergency Sunday meeting, after the company announced that an earlier released figure of a $6.5 billion write-down was actually going to be $11 billion, were they surprised of just disgusted?

Was that the last straw or were they in the dark as to the magnitude of the losses. As investors we have to consider a vast array of issues to determine if a company is worthy of investment. I know most people do not, but lets give them the benefit of the doubt and say they do. So you look at the sales and services offered, the quality of management, the various performance metrics like P/E, P/S, P/B, ROE cash flow, debt and more. You may look at the macro economic environment, interest rates, even the weather but in the end what do you know?

After you analyze everything you can get your hands on you are still just giving it your best shot (in the dark) and hope for the best. If the Board of Citigroup can't keep track of it's own company, its management structure, its risk analysis and it's exposure to major market conditions that will greatly affect the company, how are we supposed to?

Just one more good reason to stay diversified. If you are not, you should give that as much consideration as you do any individual investment. Was the Citigroup Board really in the dark? I don't know, but you should not allow yourself to fall prey to their folly.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm.

Some might say that President Bush started fiddling with things during his first election. Many in the opposition certainly felt that one of the Bush's was fiddling with something down in Florida. In any event a whole lot of fiddling has been going on since that time. Whatever credit he wants to take for the economy because of his tax cuts (think manipulation or confuscation) of which I am a benefactor, I think it is more delusion on his part.

The real reason as most would acknowledge, even if it is in hindsight, has been the easy credit. We have heard of dumb money -- this was stupid money or insane money -- but fiddle he did. And now that the house (deflated of course) of cards is in the process of coming down, along with the value of our currency we do not see anyone stepping up to shoulder the blame or offer true leadership how to improve our position. Instead we see a lot of finger pointing.

So any day I expect to see President Bush pick up a fiddle just like Nero, position himself on the balcony and start to whip out a tune. As he does, you can just picture Hillary Clinton ordering him to be gently lifted out of the White-house while he continues to play, not realizing that his time has past and it is her turn to point fingers.

Even though Hillary Clinton appears to have high negative sentiment in certain corners, it is also looking more and more like she can start thinking about running mates. Not publicly of course, but the nomination seems to be hers to lose on the Democrat's side. On the Republican side there does not seem to be a bounty of ideas, and none of the candidates will be able to help themselves in any way by linking their futures to Bush or any recent successes of the party. As it stands now, no matter who wins the Republican nomination, it is hard to run on $100 a barrel oil, 40% less potent dollars, no game plan for Iraq, growing deficits, and more.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who is just a little miffed at the way that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and his elite staff have chosen to handle our economy. My feelings fall pretty much in line with those of investment genius Jim Rogers. I listened to a short interview with him today on public radio. He pretty much confirmed my belief that the dollar could be going the way of the dinosaurs. For crying out loud, the Fed dumped about four tons of greenbacks on the financial system Thursday. Bank leaders such as Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) aren't generating enough profit to meet the demands of operation and to please the shareholders at the same time! What's the Fed going to do about the 80% profit decline at Wachovia Corp. (NYSE: WB)? A lower basis point for bank borrowing won't even scratch the surface of the cash shortfall. In fact, the lower the basis point the more it injures the bank's ability to make a profit on the loans that we need right now to salvage some home ownership scenarios from the mortgage debacle. How much more evidence do you need to realize we are living in a time of disastrous fiscal policy? We're lining up to make 1929 look like a cake walk.

This one obviously became "A Bridge Too Far" fetched, as Alaska Abandons Infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere' included in last year's budget as part of the traditional pork-barrel spending that goes on in Washington -- usually following long speeches about trimming the fat.

There is probably nothing more universally consistent in a campaign speech than the promise to cut federal spending. Of course politicians are equally consistent on failing to do so once they are in office. However, in the case of this infamous bridge to an Island of a few hundred residences, the political heat, under the proverbial magnifying glass, was too much.

The public outrage and direct lobbying from various budget watchdog groups and with the support of Senator Tom Coburn, Representative Jeff Flake, and Representative Mark Kirk, the State of Alaska has officially abandoned plans to pursue the infamous Gravina Bridge. Money is still earmarked for the state, but the recently elected new governor decided to drop the project.

Any experienced investor could give a dissertation on the utmost importance of good senior management toward the success of any enterprise. This seems to be lost on the Boards of Directors of both Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) and the New York Knickerbockers NBA franchise.

Last week the Knicks suffered another embarrassing moment during the reign of Isaiah Thomas as General Manager and Coach of the team. A jury awarded a plaintiff $11,600,000 in a sexual harassment case against Thomas and the Knicks. Thomas has squirmed around in the executive suite for a long time, and after numerous bad trades and draft picks, he let a great coach go only to decide to pace the hardwood himself. After all the wheeling and dealing, it is long overdue for a change at the top of the Knicks organization. My comment comes at the end of a long list of people that have been saying the same thing for years -- but now the feeling is almost unanimous throughout the sports world.

Congratulations to former Vice President (and woulda-coulda-shoulda president) Al Gore on receiving half of the Nobel Peace Prize this week for his strident work in the area of global warming. The news added fuel to the fire that Gore might insert his name on the long list of presidential candidates, even this late in the game.

If he enters the race, he would do so challenging Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton for the nomination, after serving as vice president under her partner and currently greatest supporter President Bill Clinton. Can you hear the backroom politics going into full swing at this very moment? No doubt there are phone lines on fire in Washington, New York, and California as I type.

Hillary wants to be president so bad she can taste it. If not for her ambition, Mr. Clinton might have been lodging with some foreign legion in a remote part of the world many years ago. Gore does muddy things up a bit for a lot of hopeful folks. If he ran it would add a lot of excitement to what is getting to be a more and more boring presidential campaign. Meanwhile after winning the "Prize," Gore passes Obama for Democratic nomination. Another twist if Gore runs (50/50 odds) is that polls still show him as a long shot to receive the nomination over Clinton. Perhaps Barrack Obama and Gore joining forces (a Gore/Obama ticket) might make some advances if they announced early -- but this would burn some bridges neither wants to burn.