Important disclosure: I am NOT a financial advisor, or in any way a formally educated professional in the realm of economics. Marketing is more my territory, which pretty much resides at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to finance. However, I do like to watch my money and make sure I'm doing the best I can with it, so I'll read various prudent publications, including Fool.com, Money Magazine, Morningstar.com, and so forth. (For the record, I focus on reading about investing "basics" such as saving money, avoiding debt, investing in the stock market, and home equity issues. I personally don't have the time or desire to get into more complex and exotic financial alternatives like options, municipal bonds, futures, etc. Those are way above me at this point in time.)
And from what I've been reading, there isn't much that's enticing about today's financial markets as we look at the strong possibility of a pending recession. So here's the situation we're in, as far as my amateur financial mind sees it:
-Stocks are taking a plunge.
-Housing prices are dropping as foreclosures go up and fewer people are moving in general
-Interest rates for CDs, savings accounts, etc. have dropped in recent months
-People are generally not spending much
-Debt levels for households seem to be rising, and many banks are in a credit crunch
-Taxes are historically rather low, but likely will be rising in the next few years as we have to pay off many expenses, such as the war we're in now, social security, etc.
All in all, not much to smile about there. But this leaves the important question: Where should I invest my money in 2008? Here are some possibilities:
-Invest in stocks. The market could keep dragging for a while, but the rebound could be here in the next few months, meaning you'll have a strong chance of getting a surge somewhere down the road. Stock investing is always the best long term plan for most people, so ignore current trends and just keep investing over time regardless of what Mr. Market is doing.
-Pay off debt. If you're not intrigued by the stock market for the short term, perhaps now is a good time to focus on lowering your credit card or other debt payments. This is a must if your interest payments are high to begin with (say 4% or higher), but even if they're lower, perhaps it's a good idea to get a head start since saving your money in CDs or money markets doesn't pack as great a punch as it did a few months ago. Chipping away or eliminating credit card debt or high-interest loans will go a long way to helping you, plus you'll feel less stressed about having to pay the bills.
-Put more money in your home equity. I've heard the expression that paying off the principal on your home is kind of like forced savings, and perhaps now's a good time to build on that. Doing this allows you to invest in yourself essentially, though the returns over the long run will not be as strong as investing in the stock market.
-Put it all on "black". Hmmm, okay, gambling probably won't get you ahead anytime soon so you might want to ignore that suggestion. But hey, it's your money.
Hope you enjoyed these random, simplified thoughts. While I'm no expert, these ideas could serve as a starting point for further research in your monetary plans. Good luck!
Friday, March 7, 2008
Saturday, March 1, 2008
My Gripe with Email as an Internet Pioneer
As a teenager in the early 90's (yikes-- was it already that long ago?), I was quickly fascinated by the development of the internet. I used it virtually every night on the old dial-up modem (yes, that really DOES seem long ago!) and cruised around for a variety of different things, ranging from sports updates to chat rooms to online gaming. In retrospect, it was very much a frontier time as the internet landscape was so new to everybody that just doing things online was pretty fun and exciting in and of itself. Some of that charm has worn off, but now most of us probably would have a very difficult time living without the internet for more than, oh, 24 hours. It's become that embedded in our lives.
Unfortunately, us early "internet pioneers" didn't really have much of a guidebook and now people like me are dealing with relics of the past that are hard to shake. One of the biggest faults in the internet, in my opinion, is that of the scattered world of email. To give you an understanding, here's a brief history of my email account usage, to the best of my recollection:
-Netcom: My family and I used Netcom as our first and longtime home internet service provider. So this was my first real email account. This lasted for a few years, but at some point we stopped using them and thus lost the email account. This was a sacrifice of being an internet pioneer.
-Hotmail: This was my first "free" email account, and currently serves as my main account since that's where my email history is headquartered. Unfortunately, I've gotten frustrated with Hotmail and I'm desperately trying to figure out a way to leave it without losing all of my old emails, addresses, and account signups. (I'm open to any ideas of how to break free!)
-Yahoo: This account I use whenever I sign up for a newsletter or something else that I'm unlikely to read. It's basically a depository for junk email that I don't want to receive on my Hotmail account.
-Comcast: Comcast is my current internet service provider and I set up an account that I use whenever I want to give a more "formal" email address since my Hotmail name is just a silly one I picked and Comcast email addresses sound a bit more professional than Hotmail. Unfortunately I can't stand Comcast's email platform (even moreso than Hotmail), so this has become a rarely used email address for me, though I still have to check it occasionally to see if I have any important emails.
-College: I used my Penn State email address as my primary address during college, but lost it once I graduated. So that was kind of a bummer. I think I could have kept it as an alumni but I never followed thru with it, so it basically just disappeared.
-Care2: I liked the idea of having a free email account that also managed to encourage me to help the environment, which is what Care2 is good for. I tried to make this my main address at one point, but I just didn't get used to it and I really don't like the platform here either, not to mention the fact that I get boatloads of spam on this account. This email account sits pretty vacant now.
-Gmail: Last year, I set up a Gmail account with the hopes of making this my central email account since it seems fairly easy to use, but Hotmail won't let me forward my email there, so my Gmail account now sits idle as well, rather than trying to switch everything over. That to me is a major pain in the butt.
-Work: Over the years, having switched jobs multiple times, I've been through a good 4-5 email accounts for my various jobs, and I've learned to keep my personal stuff separate from my work stuff for several reasons... 1. in the event that anybody sees my personal stuff on my work email, that could be problematic (not that I've got much to hide, but I don't want people all up in my biz!); 2. once you leave a job you lose that address, so it's silly to give people your work email address since they'll have a harder time keeping in touch with you; 3. mentally I need to keep the two separate or else I'll never get any work done!
Ok, so for those of you still reading, you earn a gold star! Quite an exciting subject huh!?! At any rate, you can see why email account setups can be an important life decision nowadays... if you go with the wrong one you can be screwed! And if you set up too many, like I have, you can lose your mind trying to keep up with them all.
If only I knew back then what I know now...
Unfortunately, us early "internet pioneers" didn't really have much of a guidebook and now people like me are dealing with relics of the past that are hard to shake. One of the biggest faults in the internet, in my opinion, is that of the scattered world of email. To give you an understanding, here's a brief history of my email account usage, to the best of my recollection:
-Netcom: My family and I used Netcom as our first and longtime home internet service provider. So this was my first real email account. This lasted for a few years, but at some point we stopped using them and thus lost the email account. This was a sacrifice of being an internet pioneer.
-Hotmail: This was my first "free" email account, and currently serves as my main account since that's where my email history is headquartered. Unfortunately, I've gotten frustrated with Hotmail and I'm desperately trying to figure out a way to leave it without losing all of my old emails, addresses, and account signups. (I'm open to any ideas of how to break free!)
-Yahoo: This account I use whenever I sign up for a newsletter or something else that I'm unlikely to read. It's basically a depository for junk email that I don't want to receive on my Hotmail account.
-Comcast: Comcast is my current internet service provider and I set up an account that I use whenever I want to give a more "formal" email address since my Hotmail name is just a silly one I picked and Comcast email addresses sound a bit more professional than Hotmail. Unfortunately I can't stand Comcast's email platform (even moreso than Hotmail), so this has become a rarely used email address for me, though I still have to check it occasionally to see if I have any important emails.
-College: I used my Penn State email address as my primary address during college, but lost it once I graduated. So that was kind of a bummer. I think I could have kept it as an alumni but I never followed thru with it, so it basically just disappeared.
-Care2: I liked the idea of having a free email account that also managed to encourage me to help the environment, which is what Care2 is good for. I tried to make this my main address at one point, but I just didn't get used to it and I really don't like the platform here either, not to mention the fact that I get boatloads of spam on this account. This email account sits pretty vacant now.
-Gmail: Last year, I set up a Gmail account with the hopes of making this my central email account since it seems fairly easy to use, but Hotmail won't let me forward my email there, so my Gmail account now sits idle as well, rather than trying to switch everything over. That to me is a major pain in the butt.
-Work: Over the years, having switched jobs multiple times, I've been through a good 4-5 email accounts for my various jobs, and I've learned to keep my personal stuff separate from my work stuff for several reasons... 1. in the event that anybody sees my personal stuff on my work email, that could be problematic (not that I've got much to hide, but I don't want people all up in my biz!); 2. once you leave a job you lose that address, so it's silly to give people your work email address since they'll have a harder time keeping in touch with you; 3. mentally I need to keep the two separate or else I'll never get any work done!
Ok, so for those of you still reading, you earn a gold star! Quite an exciting subject huh!?! At any rate, you can see why email account setups can be an important life decision nowadays... if you go with the wrong one you can be screwed! And if you set up too many, like I have, you can lose your mind trying to keep up with them all.
If only I knew back then what I know now...
Friday, February 22, 2008
StubHub is Flub
Free enterprise is one thing, but sneakiness and lack of transparency are another...
Recently I went online to see if I could buy tickets to take my wife to see the comic stylings of Ricky Gervais, writer of The Office and Extras, our favorite shows. I had a $50 gift card for StubHub and figured I could put it towards this purchase. So far so good.
I entered the StubHub website and found what I was looking for very quickly. Let the record show that the price came out to $78 per seat (for the nosebleed seats... but hey, we've all got a budget to follow!). Let the record also show that this price was already about $25 more than what Ticketmaster was offering for virtually the same seats (I checked there as well to see what they were able to offer). So after comparing the price between the two sites, I began to place my order at StubHub since the gift card would basically even out the lower price of Ticketmaster.
Mistake.
I go through the whole process of signing up, filling in my address, credit card info, the whole shebang, and THEN comes up the final order tally:
$183.55
That's a far cry from $156... the total of the listed ticket price of $78 x 2.
Without any forewarning, here's what they did... they tacked on a 10% commission of $15.60 and $11.95 in FedEx shipping and handling (because handling two tickets is so much work).
Silly me thought that the original $78 price included a built in commission, and I could understand paying extra for shipping, but not 12 bucks worth. (Note: apparently picking up at the box office or sending via mail were not options, so $12 was the minimum charge. Yay, what a bargain.)
So I backed out of my order and went over to Ticketmaster, another company that irks me with the way they do billing, but it turned out to be a much better deal. For virtually identical seats, I was able to buy the tickets straight up (no added commission, other than Ticketmaster's tacked on charges), and have them simply mailed to me the good ole-fashioned way for $115.45. That's a savings of almost $70, which equates to a real-time savings to me of $20 if I had went with StubHub and used my $50 gift card. Twenty bucks isn't a big difference, but I wasn't about to give StubHub my business after this whole snub.
While I will admit that StubHub does provide a helpful service for people that are looking for hard-to-get tixx, I was not happy with their fees and the fact that I would have been paying more per ticket even though the same basic seats were still available at Ticketmaster. Note that StubHub is offering better seats for the show that Ticketmaster is now out of, also at jacked up seller's prices, but I could at least understand that due to supply and demand. Makes no sense to sell the same tickets for 60% more than you can get 'em elsewhere.
The moral of the story here... you better shop around.
Recently I went online to see if I could buy tickets to take my wife to see the comic stylings of Ricky Gervais, writer of The Office and Extras, our favorite shows. I had a $50 gift card for StubHub and figured I could put it towards this purchase. So far so good.
I entered the StubHub website and found what I was looking for very quickly. Let the record show that the price came out to $78 per seat (for the nosebleed seats... but hey, we've all got a budget to follow!). Let the record also show that this price was already about $25 more than what Ticketmaster was offering for virtually the same seats (I checked there as well to see what they were able to offer). So after comparing the price between the two sites, I began to place my order at StubHub since the gift card would basically even out the lower price of Ticketmaster.
Mistake.
I go through the whole process of signing up, filling in my address, credit card info, the whole shebang, and THEN comes up the final order tally:
$183.55
That's a far cry from $156... the total of the listed ticket price of $78 x 2.
Without any forewarning, here's what they did... they tacked on a 10% commission of $15.60 and $11.95 in FedEx shipping and handling (because handling two tickets is so much work).
Silly me thought that the original $78 price included a built in commission, and I could understand paying extra for shipping, but not 12 bucks worth. (Note: apparently picking up at the box office or sending via mail were not options, so $12 was the minimum charge. Yay, what a bargain.)
So I backed out of my order and went over to Ticketmaster, another company that irks me with the way they do billing, but it turned out to be a much better deal. For virtually identical seats, I was able to buy the tickets straight up (no added commission, other than Ticketmaster's tacked on charges), and have them simply mailed to me the good ole-fashioned way for $115.45. That's a savings of almost $70, which equates to a real-time savings to me of $20 if I had went with StubHub and used my $50 gift card. Twenty bucks isn't a big difference, but I wasn't about to give StubHub my business after this whole snub.
While I will admit that StubHub does provide a helpful service for people that are looking for hard-to-get tixx, I was not happy with their fees and the fact that I would have been paying more per ticket even though the same basic seats were still available at Ticketmaster. Note that StubHub is offering better seats for the show that Ticketmaster is now out of, also at jacked up seller's prices, but I could at least understand that due to supply and demand. Makes no sense to sell the same tickets for 60% more than you can get 'em elsewhere.
The moral of the story here... you better shop around.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
New Jersey Asks for Spending Cut Ideas
In a small blurb on page 3 of the Metro Section of a recent Philadelphia Inquirer, I read about how New Jersey's Governor Corzine has set up a portion of the State's website to allow citizens to make suggestions on how to cut spending for the State government. This is a good start and something that all 8 million NJ residents should look into.
As has been well-publicized, NJ's taxes are among the highest in the nation, and that definitely hurts the common man's wallet. While it's overall a good state to call home, losing out on large chunks of money due to propery, income, sales, and other taxes does negatively affect us New Jerseyites. Which is why I whole-heartedly support the idea of asking residents what they think the State can do to save money. I submitted a few ideas, none of them groundbreaking or likely to put us back in the black, but I at least feel like my voice is heard and maybe the State can cut some costs based on my ideas or other citizens' ideas, which is what democracy is all about.
So if you're an NJ resident who is tired of shelling out money for government spending, here's your chance to chime in. Click here and suggest ways that NJ can cut costs. (Then click on "Direct Citizen Input on Reducing Spending" to fill out the form).
Remember, a penny saved is a penny less that 8 million people have to shell out...
As has been well-publicized, NJ's taxes are among the highest in the nation, and that definitely hurts the common man's wallet. While it's overall a good state to call home, losing out on large chunks of money due to propery, income, sales, and other taxes does negatively affect us New Jerseyites. Which is why I whole-heartedly support the idea of asking residents what they think the State can do to save money. I submitted a few ideas, none of them groundbreaking or likely to put us back in the black, but I at least feel like my voice is heard and maybe the State can cut some costs based on my ideas or other citizens' ideas, which is what democracy is all about.
So if you're an NJ resident who is tired of shelling out money for government spending, here's your chance to chime in. Click here and suggest ways that NJ can cut costs. (Then click on "Direct Citizen Input on Reducing Spending" to fill out the form).
Remember, a penny saved is a penny less that 8 million people have to shell out...
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Parenthetically Speaking: Let's Update the Area Code Norms
Perhaps I get it from the comic stylings of Jerry Seinfeld, but I tend to appreciate, scrutinize, and contemplate on the small things in life, just like he does in his comedy career.Case in point:
Every day I look at dozens, maybe hundreds of phone numbers. And I came to realize... what a waste it is to put parentheses around area codes. I think we're mature enough as a society to realize that the first three numbers in a phone number indicate the area code. It's simply excessive to surround those three little digits with unnecessary parentheses, just like it's unnecessary to put http:// in front of your website name, every time you reference your website in marketing materials. They served their purposes for a long time, now we move on.
Let's revolutionize the world of telephony and ditch the parentheses (shall we?).
Now that we have that settled, please enjoy this tangentially related video clip featuring Victor Borge, Dean Martin, and punctuation noises (just watch):
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Another Thought on Voting: The Offset
A fictional, though believable voting situation:Georgie and Georgia are two loving spouses who have many things in common but inherently disagree when it comes to politics. One is a left wing sympathizer, the other is a right wing supporter. They go go vote and, guess what?, their votes cancel each other out completely. So... What's the point to their voting?
Okay, yes, every vote counts and it is important to have your say in an election, but if one person's vote is going to be cancelled out by another person's vote like G and G in the above example, perhaps it's just a waste of time for these particular people to go out and vote. Their votes offset one another and basically for them to go out of their way and spend precious time and resources to press a couple of buttons seems counterproductive in their minds. And they'd probably be right in some regards.
But, if we were to institute a simple and easy system for citizens to vote quickly and easily, perhaps online, then it would do no harm for these two people to vote, even if their votes do offset one another.
Here are more reasons why people would be happy to avoid voting:
-it takes too long
-it wastes gas to drive to polling location
-out of town that day
-sick
-terrible weather
-too busy
-etc., etc.
My point here: the act of voting expends too many resources, and people can easily find a reason to not vote and thus save those resources. The easier and more efficient voting can be made, the less people need to worry about expending said resources. And we all vote happily ever after.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Let's Modernize the Voting System, Shall We?
Ok, I'm going to tell you one huge reason why voting-aged people don't vote in high numbers like they should....
They always say go in the morning to vote when there's less of a rush compared to after work. Okay, that's sensible. So on primary election day this past "Super Tuesday" I went over to the school where I vote, somewhere around 8:15. Well lucky me, all the buses are rolling in and all the parents who pay for the buses but don't want their kids riding on the buses are dropping their kids off at the front door. (Mind you it's a beautiful morning, there's no reason to be driving them as the young'ins could have comfortably stood outside, but that's a different story.) So anyway it took me a good 10 minutes just to be able to park my car in an out of the way spot and get into the building, after previously spending 10 minutes driving out of my way to get to the school. I then walked in and registered, and just as they said, there was no rush of people. So I go in the booth and press two measley buttons and leave-- one button for my candidate of choice, one to enter the vote. It took me another 5 minutes to get out, and then it added 10 minutes for me to get to work. So basically it took away 30-45 minutes of my life to press two buttons.
Now I'm not one to complain, but rather I'm looking out for the future of this country... is there no way, what with all of today's brilliant technology for people to be able to vote online, or something similar? Who wants to take a half hour or more out of their day to press two buttons? I know there are plenty of computer geeks out there who can come up with a secure solution to this outdated form of voting in person... there's GOT to be a better way to do this than our current system. And think about all of the productivity lost, gasoline wasted, and people's time manning the polls that is needlessly spent when sombeody could just as easily open his or her laptop, press a few keys and be done in 2.3 minutes flat.
The lesson here: make it easy and people will vote in record numbers, guaranteed. GUARANTEED!!!
And for those of you wondering, I voted for Pedro.
They always say go in the morning to vote when there's less of a rush compared to after work. Okay, that's sensible. So on primary election day this past "Super Tuesday" I went over to the school where I vote, somewhere around 8:15. Well lucky me, all the buses are rolling in and all the parents who pay for the buses but don't want their kids riding on the buses are dropping their kids off at the front door. (Mind you it's a beautiful morning, there's no reason to be driving them as the young'ins could have comfortably stood outside, but that's a different story.) So anyway it took me a good 10 minutes just to be able to park my car in an out of the way spot and get into the building, after previously spending 10 minutes driving out of my way to get to the school. I then walked in and registered, and just as they said, there was no rush of people. So I go in the booth and press two measley buttons and leave-- one button for my candidate of choice, one to enter the vote. It took me another 5 minutes to get out, and then it added 10 minutes for me to get to work. So basically it took away 30-45 minutes of my life to press two buttons.
Now I'm not one to complain, but rather I'm looking out for the future of this country... is there no way, what with all of today's brilliant technology for people to be able to vote online, or something similar? Who wants to take a half hour or more out of their day to press two buttons? I know there are plenty of computer geeks out there who can come up with a secure solution to this outdated form of voting in person... there's GOT to be a better way to do this than our current system. And think about all of the productivity lost, gasoline wasted, and people's time manning the polls that is needlessly spent when sombeody could just as easily open his or her laptop, press a few keys and be done in 2.3 minutes flat.
The lesson here: make it easy and people will vote in record numbers, guaranteed. GUARANTEED!!!
And for those of you wondering, I voted for Pedro.
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