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  • Frugality Plus

    What Is Frugality? What Are The Best Examples?

    think of frugality in terms of (at least) three dimensions: Money, Time and Earth. Zero-sum frugality pits these elements against each other as tradeoffs. But there is also win/win frugality where all the elements are aligned. For example, energy efficient light bulbs:

    * Money – less money on replacements and monthly utilities.
    * Time – less time at hardware stores and climbing ladders.
    * Earth – less burning of fossil fuels to generate electricity.

    Very nice example. I do think including time in personal finance discussions makes sense. At times people seem to spend far too long on minimal savings (and/or buy things that break, don’t work well, require extra time to use…), in my opinion.

    Related: New Graduates Should Live Frugally – Frugality Versus Better Returns – Too Much Stuff

  • Disease Prevention For Healthy America

    Disease Prevention Called a Better Bet

    The report from the Trust for America’s Health, a nonprofit health advocacy group, found that programs encouraging physical activity, healthy eating and no smoking were a better investment than those concentrating primarily on treatment.

    The results are laid out in a state-by-state breakdown.The District, the researchers found, would save $9.90 for every dollar invested, or $57 million over five years. Maryland would save $6 for every dollar, for $332 million over five years, and Virginia would save $385 million — $5.20 for every dollar spent.

    The researchers arrived at their numbers by calculating potential decreases in several chronic diseases based on a $10 investment per person. They found that community health programs could reduce rates of diabetes and high blood pressure by 5 percent within two years and reduce the incidence of some forms of cancer and arthritis within 10 to 20 years.

    The current health care system is not working. It is far too costly. It is not effective. It is a disease management system not a health care system. The damage to the economy of this broken health care system is huge.

    Related: Prevention for a Healthier America Report – posts on improving the health care system – Improving health care portal

  • More Americans Working Into Late 60’s and Beyond

    Americans working past retirement

    While the average retirement age remains 63, that standard may soon be going the way of the gold watch — a trend expected to accelerate as baby boomers close in on retirement without sufficient savings.
    …
    Twenty-nine percent of people in their late 60s were working in 2006, up from 18 percent in 1985, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly 6 million workers last year were 65 or over. Over the next decade, the number of 55-and-up workers is expected to rise at more than five times the rate of the overall work force, the BLS reported.
    …
    Working another three years — from 62 to 65, for example — and continuing to save 15 percent of salary could raise annual income from investments by 22 percent. Make it five years and boost savings contributions still higher — even better.

    Putting off retirement also may enable people to delay when they start taking Social Security benefits, which can significantly increase payments.

    “The longer the delay, the better” financially, said Fahlund. “To me the ideal would be 70, because you get the biggest Social Security benefit possible and all those additional years of employment. And it keeps you going mentally and physically too.”

    The economic reality is retiring at 62 is not realistic for most people today. Retirement age has barely budged at life expectancy has increased by 20 years. I have long felt the best practice for the economy is to provide part time work to transition into retirement. This allows people to slow down their work lives, but not completely leave it behind. And the financial benefits are very helpful to all those that did not save enough early in their lives.

    Related: Retirement Delayed, Working Longer – Our Only Hope: Retiring Later – Many Retirees Face Prospect of Outliving Savings – Retirement Savings Survey Results – Saving for Retirement – Spending Guidelines in Retirement – Tips To Allow Retiring Sooner

  • Google’s Underwater Cables

    I respect the management of Google. They are not tied to conventional ways of thinking. When they bought huge amounts of dark fiber (fiber optic cable that had been laid down in the internet bubble period, but was sitting unused). I figured they had made good investments while the cable was very cheap (pennies on the dollar). I watch with interest as they continue to build their own (with partners) fiber network. I am guessing this may be partially because they are smart enough to know the business oligopolies providing internet infrastructure will try to exploit their positions and government cannot be counted out to play their proper regulatory role, which is required in a capitalist system. And partially due to their huge bandwidth needs and projections for future growth.

    And since those oligopolies are not very effective companies (that rely largely on paying politicians, in order to undermine the proper role of government in a capitalist system, to gain government granted monopolist profits). That increases the benefit of Google buying into their own distribution network since excess capacity can likely be sold at a large profit: the competing companies are so used to charging monopoly prices leaving lots of room for profit. The second point can be debated but I don’t think if the economy functioned properly, with intelligently regulated natural monopolies providing internet bandwidth, I doubt Google would invest in this, but, of course, I could be wrong.

    About the Unity bandwidth consortium

    Collectively we just signed an agreement to build a new high-bandwidth subsea cable system linking the U.S. and Japan (more detail in the press release). This cable system, named Unity, will address increasing broadband demand by providing more capacity to sustain the unprecedented growth in data and Internet traffic between Asia and the U.S.

    Google stretching underwater comms cable?

    says a comms-happy research outfit dubbed TeleGeography, Eric Schmidt and crew are planning a second cable system that would connect Japan to Guam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore.
    …
    Meanwhile, ITWeb reports that Google is looking to run a third underwater cable to South Africa.

    I own Google stock.

    Related: Monopolies and Oligopolies do not a Free Market Make – Challenges in Laying Internet Fiber Under Oceans – Plugging America’s Broadband Gap – Not Understanding Capitalism

  • 10 Things Your Bank Won’t Tell You

    10 things your bank won’t tell you

    Take out cash from an ATM in London, and you’ll get hit with a foreign-transaction fee, plus a fee for using a competitor’s ATM. All told, it can cost up to $7 just to withdraw $200. Credit card purchases aren’t much better. Visa and MasterCard charge 1% of the purchase price for converting currency. And the issuing banks may take another cut, which can bring the total to 3% of your purchase price
    …
    For people who travel a lot, Arnold recommends a Capital One credit card, which charges no overseas-transaction fees (and even declines to pass on Visa and MasterCard’s 1% fee to customers).
    …
    Last year, the Government Accountability Office sent investigators to see how well banks explained their fees and other conditions to potential customers. Though banks are required by law to make this information available, the GAO said one-third of the branches it surveyed didn’t provide the required information. Worse, more than half didn’t have any fee information on their Web sites.
    …
    Though big banks offer many conveniences, they can come at a price: high fees. In 2006, the 10 largest banks generated 54% of revenue from fees and service charges. By contrast, the 10 smallest banks generated just 28% from those sources.

    Related: Sneaky Fees – Don’t Let the Credit Card Companies Play You for a Fool – Majoring in Credit Card Debt – Avoid Getting Squeezed by Credit Card Companies – Legislation to Address the Worst Credit Card Fee Abuse, Maybe –Bad Practice: .05% Interest From a Stock Broker – Hidden Credit Card Fees

  • Guy Kawasaki on Innovation

    Five most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur by Guy Kawasaki

    1) Focus on cash flow… cash is what keeps the doors open and pays the bills…

    2) Make a little progress every day. I used to believe in the big-bang theory of marketing: a fantastic launch that created such inertia that you flew to “infinity and beyond.” No more. Now my theory is that you make a little bit of progress every day–whether that’s making your product slightly better, increasing your skill in one small way, or closing one more customer.

    Related: Dr. W. Edwards Deming on innovation – Curious Cat Management Improvement blog posts on innovation – Entrepreneur Results – Better and Different

  • Kiva Fellows Blog: Nepalese Entrepreneur Success

    photo of Rita Bashnet

    Kiva has added a fellows blog – which is a great idea. The fellows are funded by Kiva (fellows are unpaid) to go to spend time in the countries Kiva facilitates loans for working with the local partners. This post is about Rita Bashnet (in photo) an entrepreneur from Nepal:

    Field visits are by far the best part about being a Kiva Fellow. You’re given the opportunity to hop on a motorbike, hike up a village trail, and actually see the impact of a Kiva loan firsthand.
    …
    Five years ago, Ms. Rita took her first loan of NRs. 10,000 (USD $150) and purchased some extra seed and fertilizer in the hopes of expanding her small vegetable patch. With the profits from this initial investment and a second loan from Patan Business and Professional Women (they offer a graduated loan program), she then purchased her first dairy cow.
    …
    After hearing about a program that subsidized the installation of methane gas storage tanks, Ms. Rita took another loan and applied for the program. With this new system, she is now able to capture the valuable gas released from her cow’s waste in a simple controlled-release storage tank. Today she no longer purchases gas from the city and can even sell some during times of shortage.
    …
    Ms. Rita exemplifies the potential of microfinance. A combination of access to capital and strategic investment has allowed her and her family to drastically improve their economic situation in a short five years.

    Great story, and exactly my hope for using capitalism to improve the standard of living for people around the globe. I notice today, for the first time, some of those seeking loans are about to have their listings expire unfunded. Kiva gives listings 30 days to be funded. I have no problem if some loans are not funded (I want to help entrepreneurs by providing funding to build a business – some loans are for things like adding a room onto their house, which is fine but not what I want to support with interest free loans from me). But, this is a big change from when I couldn’t find anyone to loan to (they had so many people looking to lend that they didn’t have enough loans to fund). If you haven’t loaned money through Kiva (or you haven’t added to your loan portfolio recently), please consider it now. If you do, send me your Kiva lender link and I will add it to Curious Cat Kivans. My biggest wish for this blog is to get more readers listed on that page.

    Related: Using Capitalism to Make a Better World – Funding Entrepreneurs in Nicaragua, Ghana, Viet Nam, Togo and Tanzania – 2006 Nobel Peace Prize to Economist – Frontline Explores Kiva in Uganda – Trickle Up

  • 8 Million New Potential Victims of Identity Theft

    8 million victims in the world’s biggest cyber heist

    The attack scooped up the personal details of every single customer that has booked into one of Best Western’s 1312 continental hotels since 2007.
    …
    Although the security breach was closed on Friday after Best Western was alerted by the Sunday Herald, experts fear that information seized in the raid is already being used to pursue a range of criminal strategies. These include:

    Armed with the numbers and expiry dates of customers’ credit cards, fraudsters are equipped to make multiple high-value purchases in their victims’ names before selling on the goods.

    Bundled together with home addresses and other personal details, the stolen data can be used by professional organised criminal gangs which specialise in identity theft to apply for loans, cards and credit agreements in the victims’ names.

    Because the compromised information included future bookings, the gang now has the capacity to sift through the data and sell “burglary packs”, giving the home addresses of local victims and the dates on which they are expected to be away from their home.

    Although the nature of internet crime makes it extremely difficult to track the precise details of the raid, the Sunday Herald understands that a hacker from India – new to the world of cyber-crime – succeeded in bypassing the system’s security software and placing a Trojan virus on one of the Best Western Hotel machines used for reservations. The next time a member of staff logged in, her username and password were collected and stored.

    It is important to do what you can to protect yourself from identity theft. Unfortunately if large companies fail to protect your private information you are left to cope with the consequences. As far as I can tell from reading the article it seems to be saying those staying or reserving lodging at Best Western hotels in Europe are those in danger of identity theft.

    Related: Credit Freeze Stops Identity Theft Cold – Budget Lodging Worldwide – Curious Cat security related posts

  • Save Money on Printing

    Unfortunately some companies think the way to make money is to try and con their customers out of cash. Certain industries seem to prefer this tactic: credit cards, banks, printer companies… To avoid rewarding them for behaving badly read: Take That, Stupid Printer!

    It refused to print a thing until I replaced the cartridge. But I’m a toner miser…
    But my printer’s pages hadn’t been fading at all. Did it really need new toner – or was my printer lying to me?
    …
    To find out, I did what I normally do when I’m trying to save $60: I Googled. Eventually I came upon a note on FixYourOwnPrinter.com
    …
    covering the sensor with a small piece of dark electrical tape tricked the printer into thinking he’d installed a new cartridge. I followed his instructions, and my printer began to work. At least eight months have passed. I’ve printed hundreds of pages since, and the text still hasn’t begun to fade.
    …
    many Hewlett-Packard printers can be brought back to life by digging deep into their onboard menus and pressing certain combinations of buttons. (HP buries these commands in the darkest recesses of its instruction manuals

    You can believe what I am sure would be arguments by the companies for why breaking customers printers is helpful or you can save money and the environment by realizing that printer companies are notorious for trying to manipulate customers and use the internet to find ways to protect yourself and the earth from such abuse.

    Related: Price Discrimination in the Internet Age – $8,000 Per Gallon Ink – Kodak Debuts Printers With Inexpensive Cartridges – Zero Ink Printing – HP Poor Service – Industry Standard?

  • Entrepreneur Results

    The Entrepreneurship Lottery by Scott Shane

    The 83 percent of companies that have less than $500,000 in sales at age six account for only 4 percent of the value of the cohort of companies. By contrast, the 1.6 percent of the companies that had sales of $5,000,000 or more accounted for 54.2 percent of the value of the cohort. In fact, just the 175 companies that had reached $100,000,000 in sales or more in year six accounted for 14.5 percent of the value of the 1996 cohort of start-ups.

    Generating significant financial value is something done by a very small percentage of start-ups, but a handful that do generate a lot of value.

    Scott Shane is a Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University

    Related: Easiest Countries from Which to Operate Businesses – Capitalism in China – Frontline Explores Kiva in Uganda