A Must Have Link

Here's an indispensable link:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Type in "Howard County" and you'll get the pertinent demographic and economic information. Notice that at the bottom you have the sources.

Type in your birth date and you'll find out exactly how long you've been alive and the temperature in the nearest big city the day you were born.

You can type in formulas and all sorts of things. You need to play around with it to appreciate its full scope. I got on and immediately found out how big Hungary is relative to Maryland. Hungary is in the news now because of debt problems.

For investment people they may be interested in the fact that it quickly calculates an optimal portfolio for a given set of stocks. Just put in the ticker symbols and scroll to the bottom. You'll see correlations and ultimately arrive at the portfolio with weightings that produces the highest return with the minimum volatility. Although you may be like me and not really subscribe to this "efficient frontier portfolio optimization" approach it is interesting.

Type in duration and it produces a simple calculator to quickly calculate duration. Durations for bonds are not easy to find online!

This link was brought to my attention by Gene Mulligan - thanks Gene. This is I believe an indispensable tool for just about everyone, but especially for the DIY Investor.