What the experts say

Commodities keep it real

Now might be a good time to stock up on oil, corn, and pork bellies, said Dave Kansas in The Wall Street Journal. The commodities sector saw a “torrid run” during most of this decade, thanks to rising global demand for food, energy, and metal. But recently, concerns about global economic growth have squelched most commodity prices, with the exception of gold. “Prices may remain weak for some time, but eventually the global economy will recover, and demand, especially from China and India, will drive commodity prices higher.” The best way to buy real goods is through broad-based exchange-traded funds, such as iPath Dow Jones–AIG Commodity Index Total Return. But play carefully with this “notoriously volatile” sector: Keep it confined to just

5 percent to 10 percent of your portfolio.

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Pay taxes with plastic?

If you don’t have the cash to pay your tax bill, you could always “slap” it on your credit card, said Bill Bischoff in SmartMoney. The Internal Revenue Service makes it fairly easy to charge what you owe on your 2008 return, as well as estimated payments for 2009. “And with the right card, you can even rack up some extra frequent-flier miles or other goodies to boot.” But there’s a catch: Uncle Sam charges a 2.49 percent “convenience” fee when you put a payment on plastic. When you take into account that fee—not to mention potential interest on the charge itself—“you can probably find a better way to dig up the money to pay your tax bill.” For instance, you may qualify for an IRS installment-payment plan, which charges only a $52 service fee plus monthly interest on the outstanding balance. That interest adjusts every quarter, but was recently about 8 percent.

An experiment in self-sufficiency

A couple of years ago I jumped on the self-sufficiency bandwagon, said Grayson Schaffer in Outside. My quixotic goal was to hunt and raise my own groceries. It didn’t work so well. “Hunting, gathering, and backyard farming make for good recreation, casual dinner-party bragging, and too many yellow squash, but they’re not always smart home economics.” When you consider the costs of, say, building a chicken coop and paying a bigger irrigation bill, the back-to-basics movement can be far from cheap. Adam Smith was on to something when he wrote about the divisions of labor back in 1776, “when making your own lard was a necessity, not a hobby.” Maybe we shouldn’t all try to produce everything we consume. Instead we should “try like hell to keep our jobs—so we can still afford to buy local, hormone-free beef from farmers who raise it for a living.”