Recent Buy: Scotts Miracle-Gro

Despite my view that the market is due for a pullback, I'm always on the hunt for stocks I believe to be good values. Today, I bought 75 shares of Scotts Miracle-Gro (SMG) for $44.50 or $3,337.50. My entry yield is 2.9% and will add $97.50 of annual dividend income to my portfolio.

2013 Goals

Again, late to the 2013 party with this post, but it's never a bad time to write down goals. 2012 was a great year. I got married to my high school sweetheart, bought our dream house back home, sold first house after doing tons of work, learned new skills, and overall had a grand ol' time. 2013 has a tough comparison, that's for sure.

2013 Stock Market Outlook

I know I've waited nearly the entire month of January to provide a market outlook/commentary for 2013, but my opinion hasn't changed from January 1st. In short, I'm confident the major indexes (S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ) will finish higher than they started by 5-8%.

Flooring Delays

We have 42 boxes of bamboo flooring sitting in our living room. Enough to cover 1,000 square feet. We planned to install a chunk of flooring this past weekend, but hit a snag. 

How to Survive Living Away from Spouse During the Week

Ever since we bought our house back home my wife and I have been living apart during the week as a "commuter couple", trying a long-distance living arrangement. She lives in our house, which is 4 miles from her workplace. I stay with my brother in the big city, which is a block away from my office. This allows me to eliminate what would be a 2+ hour commute each way. My wife and I had discussed living this way for a year or so, but the sacrifice of not being together everyday just isn't worth the benefits. Thus, I will be exploring what to do next over the next few months.

Work Travel: 55 hours in California

I've been lucky enough to travel all over the USA, Canada, and even to London for work. Some of the trips have been a great balance of work and play while others have been horrendously work-heavy. Even the trips where all I do is work aren't too bad if I leave and get home at reasonable times. I've made a few day-trips where I've had to leave obscenely early in the morning and/or arrived super late at night. Last week I had one of these work-heavy trips with a 7 hour airport wait, and my first true red-eye flight.

New Floor Ordered

After searching around town and trying to get our current hardwood floors matched, we got an idea of the cost and decided to choose another option. It would have cost $7-8/sq. ft. to match our floors. Thus, we will keep our current hardwood floors, which are apparently quarter-sawn oak with a darker inlay at the end of each plank. The areas of our house that had carpet will be replaced with a strand-woven bamboo flooring that is similar in color to our existing hardwood, but obviously a different species and slightly different look. We chose bamboo over hardwood after buying a few different samples from Lowe's. I conducted a few tests such as scraping with a nail, scraping with dog claws, and hammering. Bamboo showed the least amount of damage in each test. The cost will be about the same at about $4/sq. ft. We plan to install the flooring ourselves beginning next weekend.