As I was planning my 401k, I happened across Morningstar’s Instant X-Ray. You enter the ticker symbols (mutual funds, ETFs, and stocks are all good here) and it will tell you how your portfolio is weighted. It took me about an hour to get my portfolio weighed right, but it was really time well spent.

I found a combination of 6 mutual funds that gives me a near 70% US stock, 30% foreign stock mix. I can’t use this money for 30 years, so I’m fine with betting on the foreign markets. My style diversification box (the famous Morningstar 9 box grid) has no more than 13% and no less than 10% in any area. This means that I’m very close to being equally weighted in small, mid, and large companies, as well as those that are value, core, and growth.

I’ve got 15% in Information sectors (which is great because I work in that sector and don’t want to overweigh it), 52% Services (a little high, but the S&P is waited at 47%, so it’s not that far off), and 33% Manufacturing. My average expense ratio is a miserly 0.87% as I took good care to not add funds that have high expense ratios. I couldn’t believe that one fund choice available to me had an expense ratio over 2% – Yikes! Lastly, my foreign exposure is 16% Europe, 5% Japan, 3% Latin America, and 3% Pacific Rim.

Best of all, I actually found it fun to play with the stock and the percentages. This weekend, I will probably extend this to my whole portfolio. The basic tool is free, but if you pay you get a lot of extra features.

On my trip across country, I stayed in quite a few hotels. For the most part we went with the big chains. Military discounts allowed us to get $200 and $300 rooms at Marriotts for about 65-70% off. While it was a great deal you’d think that the $300 room in Chicago would come with free Internet – it doesn’t.

The Best Westerns were a lot better deal. Typically, they were about $60-80 a night, come with free Internet access, free breakfast, heated pools, and a quality size room. The Lake Tahoe Best Western Station Inn was a particularly great value. It was close to the casinos (3 block walk) and it’s free breakfast was a sit-down, waiter service restaurant. It’s quite surprising to be brought a check for $0.00 after ordering a good $20 worth off the menu.

By contrast, the Motel 6 was one dollar more than the Lake Tahoe Best Western per night and offered only a non-heated pool (no hot tub like the BW), no Internet, and no breakfast. The room was barely large enough to stand in – there was no way we could put our suitcases down and open them up.

Google unleashed a new service called Google Trends yesterday. This makes it very easy to compare what people are searching for on the Internet. If that doesn’t excite you and get the creative juices, I think you are beyond my help. Seriously, there’s got be about 100 ways to monetize this. I spent some time doing searches for local cities to see if there’s a correlation to real estate prices. Whatever that is, I feel like Google Sets should play a role in making sure you have all the relevant data.

If anyone has any other ideas (besides the obvious stock market searches), please drop me a comment.

I play a game called Baseball Mogul. You play the general manager of a baseball club. Your responsibilities are drafting players, trading players, and managing the financials. Provide your team with the right resources and you’ll be winning World Championships. However, make bad trades, and overpay free agents and you’ll make Tampa Bay look good. On it’s own the game is fun, but it takes several steps up when you play it against other people online.

Here are a few of the things you learn:

• As Robert Kiyosaki would say… Formulas. You probably can’t apply these baseball formulas to earn you a cent, but it gives you practice in developing a working system.

• Finances. You have to maximize your team’s revenue and be sure that you have enough money to pay the players. It’s not usually the type of game that a George Steinbrenner would succeed with.

• Negotiating. When you are in the online leagues, you learn a lot about negotiating when you are trying to trade with other players. It’s a life long skill.

• Marketting. When you are trying to trade your players, you need to market them well.

The game typically costs around $20. It’s a small investment for all the skills you learn. The best part is that you have so much fun, you don’t realize you are learning.