Berkshire Hathaway—beating the market since Buffett’s donation to the Gates Foundation

To support international development and make some money, I purchased a class B share of Berkshire Hathaway shortly after Warren Buffett announced that he was donating most of his wealth to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (detailed reasons for my purchase are here).

I figure the time is right for an update: I bought the stock on June 26, 2006 for $2,996.74 (including $9.99 commission). As of this morning, before the market opened, it is trading at $3,210.00—an increase of 7.1 percent.

And, to follow the Motley Fool’s guidance to benchmark your results, during the time that I’ve owned Berkshire Hathaway, the S&P 500 has increased by just 5.0 percent.

Full disclosure: Berkshire Hathaway is the only stock in my portfolio doing this well.

Investment advice for the self-employed

My Money Blog has an insightful post about retirement savings plans for the self-employed. It looks at the differences between SEP-IRAs and self-employed 401(k)s.

One of the negatives of freelancing is that you have to establish and administer your own retirement plans. Thankfully my two years of brokerage and banking experience, coupled with reading The Motley Fool, has given me the knowledge to make informed decisions.

I’ve just been saving for retirement in a Roth IRA, but am thinking about opening a SEP-IRA as well.