My fiancee before we met would just as soon park her money in a savings account and leave it earn .5%. She was happy her money was safe and secure and she could withdraw it at anytime.

After we dated for a while and I was comfortable giving advice to her I explained to her how inflation was making her actually lose money.

To make matters worse her 401k from work was actually investing in a money market fund paying 1%.

Taking it one step at a time we got the 401k money out of the money market and into Dodge and Cox Stock Fund, HSBC International Fund and Vanguard Index 500 (I know not the best funds going but we had limited choices), although I do currently like Dodge and Cox which recent reopened to new investors and is at a fairly low price per share. This money was not moved in one shot. We moved a little at a time as she became more and more comfortable.

Then we worked on opening up a Roth IRA. For this selection we chose Fairholme, which has a solid track record and should be a good selection.

Next for her emergency fund we got out of the .5% savings account and into an Ing Direct Savings account which paid just a little over 3%.

This has been quite a financial transformation and it still is a work in progress.

If you are interested in individual stocks I will be posting more about stocks I current like, similar to what I did with Harley Davidson stock (HOG).

This past weekend we went to Herriman State Park, here some information taken directly from the parks website.

“Harriman State Park, located in Rockland and Orange counties, is the second-largest park in the parks system, with 31 lakes and reservoirs, 200 miles of hiking trails”

Overall we had an awesome time. Did some hiking(I only fell in the creek once), did some tent camping and a lot of outdoor cooking.  Overall we spent under $300 including fuel costs($4.29 a gallon), ideally we could have picked a park that wasn’t as far of a drive(this one was 6 hours by car).

Overall we had a ton of fun hiking, and visiting the beautiful lakes and just relaxing away from the computers, TVs and cell phones.

Feel free to post about your cheap vacation ideas.