I'm a firm believer in making sure every dollar I have is working full time on my behalf. Money sitting idle is a bad thing in my book. If it's not invested then it's depreciating.

You should adopt this philosophy. Make sure every last dollar you own has a job to do. You're the CEO of You, Inc. Your investments are your employees. As CEO it's your responsibility to organize your employees for maximum growth of your little enterprise. Here are six fundamental strategies you should use to ensure each and every dollar is invested in the most optimal way.

Yesterday was one of those great days in the market, wasn't it? A strong start and an even stronger finish. Big up days feel good. Today I feel like taking the day off for a round of golf. And why not? I deserve it for sticking with my plan and successfully carrying out my long term buy and hold investor's strategy.

Now, the fact is, any day is an OK day to go play golf. But days like yesterday are unlike most other days for the long term buy and hold investor. I believe that only the long term buy and hold portfolio strategy positions an investor to take advantage of days like yesterday.

After I wrote yesterday's article about solving problems in today's greener world, I started to wonder about whether the thought process represented a lasting shift in thinking. And if it did, then what might be the consequences of bringing the green team into the mainstream of our daily lives.

I know that might sound ridiculous, but think about it a minute. Let's use yesterday's article as an example. Suppose one of the listeners to that Sunday morning program picked up on the idea of waiting a few seconds before withdrawing the filling nozzle from the gas tank. As a solution, this well-meaning inventor designs a new nozzle which prevents the user from removing the nozzle from his or her gas tank for 5 seconds after the fuel flow shuts off.

Now despite the fact that you and I, as gasoline consumers, would probably hate such a product; suppose it actually managed to gain acceptance and became a fact of our lives. I know, it's very unlikely, even laughable. Stranger things have happened though.

Driving to meet with friends yesterday morning, I noticed my favorite music station wasn't playing music. In place of the tunes I wanted to hear was the early Sunday morning DJ conducting an interview.

I came in to the conversation somewhere in the middle so I don't know who the DJ was interviewing. I do know the interviewee had something to do with living a greener life. She was going on about all the new plans for walking communities on drawing boards in our metro area and giving tips for listeners to be greener.

One of her tips stuck with me. She said it was important to wait a few seconds before removing the nozzle when filling your car with gas. Her argument was those few seconds would give the last few drops in the nozzle time to drip off into your gas tank rather than onto your car or the ground.

I agree it makes no sense to spill any gas at all. The evaporating fumes are bad for the environment and what doesn't evaporate probably adds up to a mini toxic waste dump. But what got me going was the ineffective solution she was proposing to a problem we, the listeners, know little about.

Yesterday was another big down day in the markets. Should we be worried? It's OK to worry a little; but if with a sound financial strategy backing you up the market's recent pullback shouldn't concern you too much.

A long time ago, when I was a lot younger, I remember reading that the long term chart of the stock market always looks like the path traced by a man playing with a yo-yo as he climbs a flight of stairs. If you look at the chart of the last 5 years prices of SPY, the S&P500 Depository Receipts Exchange Traded Fund, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

Are there any Dogs of the Dow fans out there? I admit, there was a time when I pursued this strategy. I'm no longer a follower because my investors intuition told me a formula so simple simply couldn't be successful over a long period of time.

For anyone not familiar with the Dogs of the Dow investment concept, it's a simple investment strategy based on the theory that large companies at or near the bottom of their business cycles will usually outperform as they regress to their mean returns.

The Dogs of the Dow strategy holds that large companies at the bottom of their business cycles can be identified by their high dividend yields. See, large companies almost never cut dividends, so when their stock prices are down compared to their dividends, the dividend yields are high.

The American dream: Owning your own home. Ah, but if only our dreams were free.

Jack Hough at SmartMoney.com kicked off a lively debate about the relative costs of owing the place you call home versus renting it. It's hard to argue with his conclusion that renting is cheaper than owning. He begins with the end, stating:

Businesses are great investments while houses are poor ones, so I'd rather rent the latter and own the former.

Then he works through a fairly exhaustive arguement for why money invested in owing your own home returns less than money invested in stocks. He sums it all up with these words:

Shares right now cost 16 times earnings and over long periods return 7% a year after inflation. Houses right now cost 19 times their "earnings" and over long periods return zero after inflation. And they look likely to return less than that for a while.

I noticed that lately I've been watching my portfolio a little more than usual. If you own stocks, then I bet you have too. Personally I'm looking at more than a 20% gain in my core portfolio in the last few months. When the bulls are running it's hard not to pay attention. Watching that bottom line grow fatter and fatter is a lot of fun.

I've also been sitting on a ton of cash, and regretting that I hadn't invested all of it back in January. There's a little voice inside my head that's telling me to dump it into the market now in order to take advantage of the gains yet to come. Every day the market finishes up the voice grows a bit louder and my feeling of regret grows.

What's keeping me from pulling the trigger? Trees.

I read an interesting post the other day asking the hypothetical question of what do to if a stock you own goes up 20% in a single day. The answer given, of course, is "it depends" and I couldn't agree more. Every situation is different and should be approached as such.

I really got a kick out of the comments. I was surprised to see the fire and emotion this simple hypothetical situation evoked.

Then again, should I have been so surprised? The author's topic combined two equally volatile ingredients, greed and the element of surprise. It proved a potent recipe for eliciting that most basic instinct of self-preservation: the fight or flight response.

But I don't intend to go about analyzing reactions to the post. You should take a few minutes and read it for yourself. Then ask yourself what you'd do. Your answer says a lot about the type of investor you are.

Want to know what I'd do?

From time to time I like to put on my geek hat and do some charts and graphs. This weekend was one of those Monte Carlo weekends.

You've probably seen those pretty Monte Carlo charts the financial planning sites are so fond of. You know the ones. You input the value of your retirement savings today and your risk tolerance. You tell it how old you are, how long you think you'll live and when you'd like to retire. Then you give it an estimate of your retirement expenses. When you click the submit button they show you a graph of how your portfolio will perform in the future.

Well, not exactly how it will perform. The charts I've seen usually have a bunch of lines, each roughly progressing up and to the right, but with fluctuating returns. You probably know the ones I'm talking about. If you don't, you're about to see some examples which will get you familiar with them.