Too Good to be True?

I understand that mutual funds are fickle, but I'm still rather excited by the fact that my $3000 has made $31.28 in just two days. It'll probably drop down again sometime soon, so I'm not sure how much weight to put on that $31.28 cent gain. Still, that's pretty cool... to think, it's possible to make an extra $15 a day. That's enough for lunch!

Meanwhile, my Roth IRA has gone up $18.40. So I'm up $49.68 in two days. That's not bad, is it? I wonder how long until my accounts are at less than what I started with.

I'm still confused about the CD I tried to open online. It was that $5000 one at 5.01%. BoA called me but I still haven't gotten back to them. And, as I noted before, I tried to take of the matter with a real person at an actual banking center, but because I bought the CD online I can only ask my questions to online banking reps via the phone. I'm kind of hoping something went wrong with it and it didn't go through. That way I can take that $5000 and put it into another mutual fund, perhaps a large cap one. Or maybe I'll be risky (stupid?) and put more in my VMGIX fund.

One thing I don't get is if mutual funds work like the stock market. For instance, is it best to "buy" when the price is low for each fund share? Or does it matter less because you're buying pieces of a bunch of stocks as opposed to just one stock?

I wish my bank would process transfers faster. It gets confusing when it looks like my checking account has $14k in it but really I know $6k of that was moved to the IRA & mutual fund and $5k of that is supposedly tied up in a CD that may or may not exist.

Off on a tangent, it's quite exciting that I've gotten so many comments on my blog in the past day. One person who reads my other blogs actually figured out who I am! I don't really care much if people who know me read this, but I guess I'm partially ashamed of being such a spoiled brat with my cushion of savings in the bank, and I feel awful that I don't have student loans to pay while plenty of my friends do.

Then again, I also have friends whose parents will gladly put them through grad school and I know that, while my dad would help out here and there, I'm on my own when it comes to any higher education. Or am I? Well, my father says he can access his 401k funds in about 3 and a half years. It seems like he's hinting at the fact that at that point he'll be able to help out with money a bit more.

A part of me wants nothing to do with his money right now. I've already received more than I desire, and I feel guilty about that. But there's also reality, and how I'm likely going to be making a "normal" salary for the foreseeable future. My $24k in savings doesn't seem like much when I figure plenty of my peers are making $50k or $60k per year. Give them two years or less and already we're on an equal playing field. So how guilty can I let myself feel, really?