If you spent cost of original ipod ($499) on AAPL stock (~53 shares), you'd have about $13,000 today. If instead of buying a '09 Ford Taurus (YESSS) you bought F stock, you'd have about $200K today.

Obviously these are very selective cases, but it leads me to wonder, what would happen if I forced myself, upon any large purchases, to also buy the stock of these companies in an equal (or exceeding) amount?

It would be interesting because it'd force me to budget a LOT more (thus cutting spending). Also, your implicit purchase of an item indicates quality in the company - and you wouldn't feel so bad if that company ended up doing well.

Even looking at the things I've been excited about - if I had bought Amazon's stock when I crowed about the awesomeness of Amazon S3 - I'd have nearly quadruple my money!

What's great about Mint.com is I can go back and look at how much I spent on different companies, and from the spending patterns, it's clear where I need to buy some stocks.

So this year, I'm going to try this out. Any time I spend more than $250 with a publicly traded company for a year, I must buy their stock. (I will tweak the exact amounts soon, as different industries have different rules).

In order to play catch-up, I did a little digging into my Mint and discovered I've spent a disproportionate amount of money on these companies:

• Amazon
• Shell
• Banana Republic
• Treasure Island (UGH)
• Southwest
• Macy's (bought a single piece of furniture, doesn't count)
  

Time to add these into my watchlists and get in when the price is right!

(And seriously, a big plug to Mint.com. This app has really changed my life. If you're not using it, you don't know what you're missing out on).