AssetBuilder - Registered Investment Advisor :: Simple Investing Smart Future

By Scott Burns I have a confession to make. Do you remember the parsimonious Prius I’ve written about, the one that gets 45 mpg? Well, it isn’t the only car in the Burns family. Our other vehicle isn’t a Zamboni. And you won’t find it in our garage, because it won’t fit. It’s a 2002 Chevrolet Suburban. That’s a Big SUV. To be specific, it’s a Z-71 with...

By Scott Burns According to the trip meter on our 2003 Prius, my wife and I have covered the last 2,200 miles at an average of 46.1 miles per gallon. That’s pretty typical of the mileage we’ve enjoyed since buying the car five years and 62,800 miles ago. Back then we wanted to accomplish two things. We didn’t want to be part of the increasing problem...

Last year, Dallas computer whiz Tony Scott drove a BMW M series, an expensive car that BMW advertises as "a race car for four." Then, contemplating the need for a new $1,200 set of Z-rated tires and a future of 15 miles a gallon on premium gas, he made a decision. He traded the Beemer for a Toyota Prius sedan, a car that gets attention for its mpg,...

This morning, I looked at the gages on our 2003 Prius and smiled. They showed that the last 215 miles had been driven at an average of 47.3 miles per gallon. The average mileage actually rose slightly on the 14 mile round trip to the supermarket. That's representative of what my wife and I have experienced in the 40,200 miles since we bought the car...

What's your GPY? That's gallons per year. Not MPG, miles per gallon. The ultimate measure of how we respond to our new energy crisis is how much energy we consume, not how efficient we are at consuming it. This is important because we don't have much going for us when it comes to becoming energy efficient. The biggest single reason? Gasoline has been...

Allow me to introduce a new economic indicator. I call it the H2PRS, short for the Hummer2/Prius Resale Ratio. It's a slightly idiosyncratic measure of the amount of additional depreciation owners of low fuel efficiency vehicles may suffer relative to fuel-efficient vehicles. The figures for the indicator come from Kelley Blue Book, one of the major...

Is there an investment message in our checkbooks? Very likely. Since consumers account for 70 percent of the economy, changes in how we spend are the make-or-break factor for most companies. With that in mind, I used my Quicken files to see where the Burns family is spending more (and less) money. Don't think of what follows as stock tips because there...

Allow me to introduce a new investment vehicle: your car . No, I'm not talking about investing in cars that rise in value. We all know that virtually never happens. Cars are a wasting asset. They lose value faster than money. Buy one in the morning; it will lose value before we get it into the garage. So your car isn't a true investment vehicle. But...

Do you like to breath? I do, too. Unfortunately, we are approaching what some call "the Ozone season" in Dallas, my home since 1985. The Ozone season, in case you've never heard of it, is the period where the air we breathe is likely to be unhealthy. It can also make you miserable, which is what it does to me and to my wife. It was not like this in...

During World War II the U.S. Maritime Commission built 2,751 Liberty ships, the relatively small cargo ships that were our supply lifelines for the war. They were standardized, mass-produced vessels assembled from 250,000 prefabricated parts. They cost about $2 million each. Serving on these vessels was dangerous and less than glamorous. But the war...