Buy and Hold is my life.....readjust every so often......

GENERAL INVESTMENT APPROACH:
I would like to think that my investment approach is one of "buy and homework" (As Jim Cramer calls it).....but I think it is a bit easier to describe it as a more classic buy and hold.

Every quarter I look at my portfolio and see how it is doing. I do this against what I think the market is doing...and I look at particular items in the mix against each other.

I try not to chase maximum yields, but rather I try to see if the overall blend is performing OK. I tend to leave things along, and perhaps do a small level of "rebalancing" if things are a bit skewed.

But even here, this is normally a once a year activity.


HOW DO I SAVE?:
I do the same for saving...I don't think about it on a daily of weekly basis....I set-up a budget and and allow my savings to simply be an automatic part of my cash-flow. Then I just monitor the items of my budget on say a monthly basis to make sure I don't spend too much and unbalance the apple-cart.

When this works, savings just seems to happen automatically. I don't fret over it. It might not happen in the same level every week, but over the long term it works.

I sort of put it on autopilot.


CASH FLOW IS KING:
Ok...so if all this is automatic, how do I make it happen? What is it that I monitor and adjust?

How keep the whole system described above flowing.....in the black? How do I know my plans and budgets are going along as planned?

Well, I monitor cash flow fairly closely. I find this is the magic lever because that's the place where money is moved.....and is the place where the rubber meets the road. Once I get my weekly spending in line with my budget, I know I'm saving!