There are many contradictory signals when one is trying to decide whether to buy or rent their home. We personally struggled with the calculations quite a bit as well, and searched a lot online to determine the financial viability of our decision and eventually came upon a website here: Buy vs. Rent Calculator

In general everybody says buying a home is the right thing to do - but only the person themselves can judge what kind of a home they like and how much risk they can tolerate ...

A while ago I read a very nice book called trading for a living. The book is written by Dr. Alexander Elder, and it explains technical analysis for trading stocks. The main idea behind the book is that stock trading is all about psychology, and the stock market ups and downs depict the psychology of traders. By analyzing the stock charts, we are actually analyzing the psyche of the mass market, and then he goes on to explain some fundamentals of technical analysis.

One major aspect of technical analysis is strict rules, but as a beginner applying strict rules is very hard. As time goes though, discipline will eventually come.

Until recently, I used to access a free website for stock charts - clearstation.etrade.com - but now I have found a software that gives good analysis and stock charts for EOD (end of day) data.

Try it out for yourself - www.aptistock.com - it is ad supported, but my McAfee anti-virus and firewall have not reported any virus/spyware.

If interested, Dr. Alexander Elder's trading for a living book can be purchased from Amazon here:

Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management