Another interesting video and some of my thoughts on investing.....

This video talks about a vision of how America pulls out of our current slide....I find Mark Dow to be well thought out and very bright. (I wish I could look so deeply at the big picture as people like Dow do)

Watch the video and then continue down to some thoughts I have on this, and how I am thinking about the future and my own savings capital.

Well, I also believe the USA will continue our slide and continue to lose our importance in the world. This will result in higher prices because of our slipping dollar and our slipping value to the world.

So what to do.....first, it depends on how we pull ourselves out of what I think of as the 'Occupy X Inequality". I think the Occupy Wall Street  simply want to strip the wealth from anyone who has it and give it to anyone who does not. If this is the way the country decides to go, then the obvious answer is to get out of dodge.....not so much flee the country, but make investments elsewhere where things might be sheltered or hidden from the grabbing claws of those doing the "redistribution"....I hate to think like this, but I also think I have done the right thing over my life in saving, and my gains are in no way "ill-gotten".....so like you would expect anyone to do, I want to keep them.

Having said that, I hope the government tries to try another tack....let's try to "grow" our way out of things.....let's make jobs by giving incentives to business in areas we so badly need.....areas we might be able to lead the world in.

So I am thinking I need to convert my savings to some sort of business....what that is, I am not sure.

Energy is something I think we will all see changes to in the future....I am thinking about some sort of wood pellet business. Perhaps dove-tail that will a recycling gig....but I don't want to get too deep into something I have not fully grocked out.

But the concept is the same.....to make money, one needs to take risk, and to add value. The value I see for the future is to create something....and create a business around that which adds value. (here and abroad...)

Check out this gal's BLOG...explaining the Chinese Money Ethic

Check out personal finance BLOGGER WISEBREAD: Living Large On A Small Budget for more insight into how the Chinese people save.

Compare that with how you treat your money....how you save.

Compare that with how others your know save......

The savings rate is a broader issue that even I thought....

The poor piggy bank to the left is darn hungry....and I was thinking that our national savings problem was happening because perhaps half the people....maybe less...are not saving enough.

But the table below that I took from this article on Bankrate.com shows perhaps a broader problem. Oh...and it is a problem that appears to NOT be as age specific as I thought. (though older people do seem to save better)

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Monthly savings goal by age

Total 18 to 34 35 to 49 50+ Able to achieve monthly goal 28% 28% 24% 39% Able to save some, but not enough 36% 34% 39% 32% Not able to save at all right now because of other financial responsibilities 32% 34% 34% 25% Refused to answer 4% 4% 3% 4%

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Yikes....over 70% of the people in this country are not making their goals! Oh...and do you suppose their goals are high enough to begin with? (I hope so)

This is scary.....how will be cope with this.

I suspect I know and I'm worried by the fact that the savers are in the vast minority....sounds like wealth re-distribution is probably the word of the day in the future. Yup....Tax the "rich"....except in this case, the rich are simply those who put money away as they were supposed to...perhaps even went without things to make sure they would not be a problem for their kids.

Live and learn....of course, it has not happened yet. Let's hope it doesn't, because this is a horrible message to send.....do the right thing and you will be rewarded (NOT), or spend like a drunken sailor and we will bail you out....you choose.

Had I known about those options, I might have chosen to run my life a bit differently. (but as I said...it hasn't happened yet)

Money, life and retirement planning

IT HAS BEEN A WHILE:
It has been a while since I have posted even though I have been sort of storing up ideas for posts ever since.

But this weekend I was talking to a friend of mine about retirement and about retirement savings, and it struck me that there are so many different approaches. (duh...how obvious)

They were telling me how lucky their parents were to have invested in a house because it is currently their retirement nest egg.

At this point with the housing market melt-down, I am not sure that investing in a house would be the way to save right now. (it might be good after the market adjustment / collapse though)

MY RETIREMENT SAVINGS APPROACH:
We own a house....well, most of it at this point, and we have seen appreciation from the $175,000 we paid for it. (it's probably worth about $310K after all is said and done)

But the major problem is of course that I would still need to live somewhere.....so I would be trading rent for a mortgage payment.....but then I guess I would have more in savings.

But I have never considered my house to be a savings vehicle.....I always thought it as gravy on top of it all should I make a profit in the end. I was more of the slow and steady saver.....always trying to put as high a percentage of my pay away every week/month.

I knew enough NOT to put that savings under my mattress, but to try and put it into fairly safe investment vehicles. No...I never really bought individual stocks....I never bought on margin...I never bought short....I basically went into very safe mutual funds and bonds.

As the SBLI ad says: "It ain't glamorous"..... but it works so long as time is on your side.

Buy and hold....that is my life of retirement investing. This means I investigate things in the finance investment arena, I readjust any savings I have into areas I feel comfortable with...and I go to sleep for about a year and do it all again. (with money going into those investments I chose every week from my paycheck)

Boring indeed....but I never really wanted white knuckle adventure from my retirement investments, so it suites me.

RETIREMENT:
As I see the computer industry slowly being absorbed by companies overseas....I think about my future employment. First of all, I see great pay cuts in my future if I have to change fields. I also see possible re-tooling of skills....which might mean education costs too.

My daughters are still in College...with Kristen having 3 more years of her BA degree and Kim one more year. But Kristen will be going on to more school, and I would like to help with that. (and Kim too, if she decides to go on)

Right now I am amazed that our investments are brining just enough in to pay for these costs......at least with the continued money I still save from my pay. But if I lost my job, things would go upside down very quickly because I too would need to start taking from the pot.

So the next few years are important to my work life....I have to keep that in my mind and work hard to be the most valuable employee possible. (of course, even that doesn't help some times :-)

STEPS TO RETIREMENT:
The article I reference above is an interesting one as it talks about the five emotional stages we go through as we move into retirement. These steps are described as: Imagination, Anticipation, Liberation, Reorientation, Reconciliation. (with retirement day happening between Anticipation and Liberation)

I would say that I am somewhere between Imagination and Anticipation....even at my young age of 48. I probably should not be thinking so "old", but it really isn't so much a matter of what I want to happen...but what the outside influences of the job market are thrusting upon me.

I'd love to work until I was dead....and I probably will....but I might not be working in a high paid job that will make ends meet....so I have to at least have a plan to get the cash flow needed.....and I guess since I would be playing with my retirement money....I tend to think of that as "retirement".

Such is life....it never goes per plan.

Low-Cost Internet Eyewear Sales to the Rescue!

I have VSP (Vision Service Plan) at work and my eye doctor contacted me to remind me that it was time to get my eyes checked.

So I went in and it turns out my left eye has gotten a little weaker, and I am now in the range where I need bifocals (or a progressive multi-focal lens) So I sit down, pick a frame and the whole bill comes out to about $150. (including $25 co-pay for the exam, and $25 co-pay for the frames)

The next day (Friday) I get a call from a worker at the doctors office telling me that made a mistake with the date of my VSP coverage. It turns out I would not be covered for frames until January 2008, and that this would cost me another $150!

I really wasn't excited to spend that kind of money so I decided to cancel the glasses all together and wait until January.

But when I got home that night, I decided to go online and search out inexpensive eye-wear, and I found several sites that claimed to have some really great deals. They noted $9.00 and $8.95 glasses....so I took a closer look.

Well, I figured the prices were OK, and I would take a risk on the frame and lens quality. I would simply throw the glasses away if they were not that good. (besides, it is sort of exciting to take a risk...albeit a cheap, low cost no-brainer)

So I ordered a pair of single prescription $8.95 stainless steel frames, and a $51.95 set of fancier progressive len frames also in stainless.

What the heck....$65 for two pair of glasses. Less than half of what I had paid for the one on Thursday.

Do I really support the "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act"?

I am a user of compact flourecents in a big way. I believe every light bulb in our house are CFL.

But what I saw reported today in this news story made the hairs on the back of my back stand up.

Apparently the State of California is looking at passing legislation to outlaw standard incandecent lightbulbs. They want to make everyone buy CFL.

As I said, I think that using CFL is a great thing, as whitnessed by my own usage.....but I really don't like the government telling be what is good for me.

I agree that changing my underware every day is good....but do we need a law for that? Don't get me going on seatbelts....I wear them and have since about 1976 when I got my license.

I think our economy, and in fact society in general operates best when things are "pulled" rather than "pushed". Yes, there are larger projects that would be too difficult to muster the needed grassroots support for to make them happen.....but let me use my brain and give me some sense of freedom.

If California is considering this, how far behind can Massachusetts be?

Thank God for our simplicity and my wife's organization

I wrote a post along the same lines a week or so ago, but I thought I would update people on the progress to date.

Money does NOT make the world go around:
My wife's passing has been an emotional roller coaster, and I have commented on that quite a bit in my Journal....but I wanted to keep this BLOG at least somewhat related to personal finance....so I don't mean to make our situation sound like it is all about money....far from it....it is MOSTLY about family, and as my father ALWAYS told me: "Money does not make the world go around....but it sure greases the wheel."

Translation....doesn't doesn't buy happiness, but life is sure harder if you don't pay any attention to it at all.

Well, I want to report that I have not quite finished a month and I feel a bit more in control of the finances. I did have an initial problem with cash flow....not having enough money in the bank to feel safe about writing checks against any bills....but once I pulled a little from savings in as a buffer, I felt a lot better. (actually, there probably was enough, but not having an actual knowledge of what we really expected for bills, it made me unsettled to be as close as $200 from zero)


Bloated Mastercard Bill:
I fully expect about a $14,000 Mastercard bill coming in about January 15th....but that is mostly due to the funeral expenses of about $11,000. That is the largest credit card balance I have ever had....though there was one time we paid part of my daughters college semester on the card in order to grab some of the cash back we get from Mastercard. (but we always paid it off)


The Roll of Insurance:
This brings me to the topic of insurance. Get some....make sure it at least covers burial costs. it isn't all that expensive, and it helps your survivors. We have a fairly large policy on me, and only the policy my wife had at work on her.

The concept behind our doing that was that I am the big bread winner, and it is "mostly" my salary that ran the house. In fact, for a number of years my wife stayed home with the kids because we both agreed this was the best thing for them....so my salary was critical and had I died back then, she needed to replace that salary in order to live. (and not in a cardboard box)

So we really had little insurance on my wife...but enough to make a dent in things we owe in all this. But let me be clear, the big problems in life are not money problems.....they are generally emotional in nature and are often connected with health, love and people.

Oh, and our insurance only covers us for our daughters time in school. We bought term policies for just a couple of years longer than they would be in school. Term was cheaper, and we were trying to guarantee the viability of our payment for school....after that and we figured we could live on our own savings. (but our daughters education was very critical to us)


Current Cash Flow & Long Term Investment:
My short term cash flow is under control....I need to focus a bit more on my long term investment situation, since I think this will be changing given our new family configuration. Also, my youngest daughter wants to change schools, and keep going for her PhD....which I want to support in some manner. (for tuition)

We certainly are NOT millionaires, but Cheryl and I had goals to get our daughters into school and to pay for their education. So this is part of the plan. (I just need to make sure things are "tuned up" to maximize our opportunity to do just that)

Cheap Knock-off Music Player on EBay saves me Ca$h!

Up until about a week ago I was the happy owner of a Creative Zen MP3 player that I used to listen to music and Podcasts. (not in that order though!)

Well, last week it simply stopped working. I suppose I probably manhandled it at some point in the past, and it's disk probably just decided it was time to die.

So I decided two things.....these things were "throw-away" items....and I wasn't going to pay much for the next one! (and even then, I wasn't going to have a disk drive in it!)

So I stated looking on the net and found these cheap Chinese players on EBay, and I decided to take the chance. (since they were 4GB and could be big on for less than $65 including shipping)

I thought I would take the chance on it since a 4GB iPod is quite a bit more money, and I have no interest in getting a proprietary iPod device. (the 4GB nano costs $199, and I don't think it does video....and I think the 4GB Creative MicroPhoto, which does photos but not video, but still has a disk costs about $179 now)

So I bid and won, and I've only just begun playing with it, but it sure seems pretty cool....it looks like a USB disk, so you can load it with anything from music to spreadsheets if you need 4GB space to carry things.

Also, it is an MP4 player...which means it plays video as well as all kinds of audio formats! (video requires conversion which is NOT a fast process)

Ok...so the tools used to organize my music don't seem to come with the machine....but I can use cut and paste with the best of them, and for only $60...that I can do!

There are several of these units on EBay as I type this....check them out, they may be useful.

Sold the other half of my VG....

I have a small Scottrade account with a bit of money in it that I thought I would try my hand at "trading" with.

I have never been a trader.....as I am more of a "saver" that invests with more of a buy and hold approach. I try to scope out long term investments, and quite heavily diversified. (so I skipped all the day trading of the '90s.....)

Anyways, a number of months ago I took the plunge buying 300 shares of Vonage at about $9.00 per share. I thought that was a GREAT buy because I use Vonage.....I think it is a GREAT product, and I thought the stock's fall from $14 was only a short term glitch.

Well, then the trouble started for Vonage.....from their poor handling of stockholders "revolt" after their IPO to their being taken to court for a patent violation....all of which they seemed totally unprepared for. They ended up on the stock "black list" pretty quickly.

Even while I say that, I still think they have a great product, and urge people to consider them for their phone service...but in terms of their stock, it seems to be a non-starter right now.

So I started out by selling half of it about 2 weeks ago, and then last Friday I sold the rest at $7.02 per share.

Two weeks ago I took the first half I sold and put the money into China Unicom LTD (CHU) (the small Mobile Phone company in China which started out going gangbusters but has now fallen back about to where I bought it) So this past Friday, I sold the second half of my VG and now my second chunk of money is sitting in cash waiting for the right investment.

How will I figure out that that will be...at this point I am not sure. More analysis is needed!

Review: BJs vs Sams vs Costco

Bottom line question.....would shopping at any of these places save me money? Also, did I like one place over the other? I went out for a few hours seeking these answers today.

It all started when my wife gave me a coupon from BJ's that would give us me a 60 day membership there. (I say ME because while the paid membership gives you two cards, this 60 day free membership is locked to a single shopper....because they put your picture on the card) So while I knew I was going to take advantage of this trial BJs membership, I thought I would stop in at Sams Club as well as Costco which are all down the street from each other here in Nashua, NH. (Living in southern NH is great....we have more stores than we would normally have because the "sales tax-free" shopping of New Hampshire attracts so many people from Massachusetts)

I do have "some" experience with club shopping, though I myself have never belonged. It has probably been about 4 years since I stepped inside one of these places, but I must say that today they all look about the way I remember them. My wife had a card for her school when she worked at Presentation of Mary Academy, but she didn't shop there for home things...and that was also a few years ago too. (I believe my Mother in-law might have a BJ's membership...but I am not sure)

When I say they all looked as I expected, I don't mean to suggest that the three clubs each don't have their own personality....they certainly do. But they also seem to have a lot in common. I was actually surprised at now much food areas of each of these places sold. Between junk food, auto stuff and electronics.....there was little room for anything else. (they had "good" food too....and at what looked like good prices....but they serve a ton of snack food and pastry...I guess this is what people buy)

But in terms of access to the general range of things, I didn't find the store to be as interesting as a Walmart of Target. They all simply seemed to have tons of certain things, and then it seemed catch as catch can for the rest. (I guess I remember a lot of clothes too.)

In fact, I was actually looking for a lamp for our bedroom, and I was very disappointed to find that none of the three stores had ANYTHING interesting! (They had small desk lamps...maybe one or two at each place.....but only Sams had a single tall floor lamp)

I also went from store to store with a few "items" in mind as I was going to benchmark between the them. The items included the following:

• Block of Cheddar Cheese (2 pounds or more)
• HD TVs
• Laptop Computers

These items seemed to be popular things at all three stores, also being front and center in all three. I was going to try and benchmark them by price, but this turned out to be impossible since the brands and items varied from store to store. This means I would have been comparing apples and oranges. (BTW: All three DID in fact sell apples and oranges, I should have compared those! :-)

All I could notice is that on these sort of popular high volume items, all three stores carried say three price/feature bands of product.....like a $700, $1100, and $1500 laptops of several different screen sizes.

SO DID I LIKE ONE CLUB OVER ANY OTHERS:
So my comparison is not so much based on particular items as opposed to general impressions, and my general impression started off with thinking there was a lack of selection, even in the more popular items. Yes, the selection is perhaps as good as any department store besides Target and Walmart, but since I would be "tied" to the store because of my membership, I wasn't comfortable with that. (though I was shocked at how many different digital cameras that Costco had....it almost seemed that they had as many as Hunt Photo, and at very good prices.)

If I were to pick one out of the three, I would go with Costco. I liked the selection a bit more, and I actually "liked" the massive size of the items available. All three had bulk packages of things, but Costco seemed to take that to the extreme with many things. (how about a 50 pound bag of sugar or two gallons of Mayonase!)

The people at BJs seemed to be friendlier, and more willing to help....and while all three had that warehouse "feel", Sams Club seemed to be almost out of control in terms of being messy. (but then the Walmart next door is similar too)

But remember....my review above might only be valid in these particular stores...and even then, I might have hit a particularly good or bad work crew when I went. I like the idea that BJs has to give you the 60 day trial shopping with limitations. I think Sams also has some sort of "one day" memberships.....but Costco seemed almost militant about even letting me go in without a memberhip card. I needed to "register" and get a pass to even look! (I was stopped at the door on the way in.....don't they think people come in to compare?)

Representatives at BJs and Sams Clubs gave me the pitch, gave me a sizable packet on their membership benefits and answered all my questions when I asked.....Costco was a bit different. The guy there simply have me a very thin flier and told me to look online. (not a very appealing sales job...and I had read online about how Costco employees are more motivated and friendly...I didn't see that, but maybe it was just the particular crew I ran up against)

WOULD I SAVE MONEY WITH A MEMBERSHIP:
First of all, it seems to me that warehouse shopping just doesn't fit our needs. The cost of membership needs to be considered, and while there appears to be savings to be had, unless we either buy everything there or we have our eyes on some bigger ticket items we would probably lose out. (and even the big ticket item argument might be dampened because of the limited selection and the ability to perhaps buy those on "special" at a regular store.....like buying last years lawn mowers at the start of snow season)

In fact, this was something I wondered....do these clubs ever have "sales" to move old models? (That's where a lot of savings can be had, and this I just don't know)

I guess general prices are a bit cheaper than just buying "off the rack" at department stores....but perhaps NOT if you look around and shop a bit. For example, the Microsoft Zune player was $239 at Costco....and it was $249 at Target. (but Target was giving the buyer a $25 gift card for the purchase...so it was LESS)

As I said before, I actually like the idea of bulk shopping for many items, but not everything, and this would mean that our shopping effort would be going up rather than down....and this is worth something too. If you had a situation with a bigger family or perhaps a business where you had a pretty constant volume of purchases of particular items....it seems like a GREAT idea. (Another example, I have a couple of older printers, and they just didn't carry the toner I needed)

So I will probably use my BJ's membership as much as I can over the next 60 days, and unless a bolt of lightning comes down hitting me and somehow really enhancing my shopping experience...I will probably let my membership lapse.


BOTTOM LINE:
There certainly is decent savings to be had, but you have to "fit the mold" in order to realize it.

Check it out yourself....here is a coupon for a 1-day BJs membership. (hunt around, you might find coupons for the other places as well)

Check out other people's reviews too on BJs, Sams Club and Costco.

Book Burro: Saving money on Book Purchases

Do you like to read?

Do you like to save money?

Would you rather not only find a book for a lower price at a bookstore, but perhaps even just find it at a local library to save buying it all together?

Well you answered YES to these, then you might want to check-out BOOKBURRO.ORG.

It is a Firefox Browser add-on that allows you to search for books by ISBN number. It has a connection to a number of online bookstores as well as the ability to find books in local libraries.

I was shocked to find that not only the Boston Public Library was included in their search, but also Rivier College, the college I am taking MBA classes at currently.

Check out BOOKBURRO.ORG, it is really cool!