Save Money with Credit Cards (pt.1)

Many people wish they could pay their credit cards off, cut them up, and say goodbye to debt forever. While this is a great financial goal, I urge anyone considering this step to stop before you cut up your credit rating along with that card. Why should you stop short of cutting up your credit cards? I'll let you know on my next post, but first, several tips and a link to help you get them paid off.
While the main reason you want to pay those cards off may be because you want collection agencies to stop calling, or you've realized it will take decades to pay off the amount you owe, it is important to identify the source of the problem. Admit that all blame does not lie at the feet of the credit card (a silly piece of plastic if you think about it) and you've reached the first step in dealing with your debt.
We are not born with a credit card balance, but so many people have high balances that it seems natural. Let me introduce to you a new way of thinking. Living below your means is a method of financial planning that I learned from The Motley Fool (feel free to visit, I get no kickbacks). In simple terms, it consists of spending less money than you make.
Simple enough in theory, it often has significant ramifications. Because I'm focused on Living Below My Means, I'll forgo the new expensive car that is affordable with my doctor wages, and instead continue to drive my still-reliable though very unimpressive (but paid off) low-end commuter car. What I gain from this sacrifice, is the interest on the expensive car, and the interest I can make on the downpayment I no longer need to make. As a coworker once put it, as soon as your done paying off a loan, the money seems to vanish. Well, what if you ignore that money coming in? Or, better yet, what if you assume that instead of $300/month, your amount due for your loan is $400/month. Don't know where to get an extra $100 per month? How about cutting out a cable bill or having chicken instead of steak? Would you dare go to something as drastic as making your own meals instead of eating out for a month?

Worlds Best Cup of Coffee

A well-liked professor in college introduced me to a wonderful coffee maker while teaching us about a particular quality control method. The method relies on finding characteristics of a product that are important to a consumer, figuring out a scale on which to measure the characteristics and, finally, improving as many of the characteristics as possible, starting with those most important to the consumer. He set out various qualities of coffee: bitterness (or acidity), aroma, temperature, smoothness (a measurement of the particles left), and some methods for measuring each of those characteristics. His daughter was taking classes at the university where Alan Adler teaches, and was introduced to this amazing coffee that she could drink without her normal milk and sugar.
The coffee was an ordinary blend of coffee, but from a very different type of coffee maker. At this point in the class I was attentive because he was slightly off-topic, but I wasn't real excited, as there are many coffee makers out there that I'm sure make a great cup of coffee after all, they can cost several hundred dollars. My ears perked up when he mentioned that it costs only 30 dollars, and can make from 1 to 4 cups of regular coffee or espresso.
On my birthday list for that year was the AeroPress coffee maker. You grab a mug, put one of the filters in the bottom of the press, scoop the coffee grounds into the press, then fill to the line with hot water (not boiling, just hot enough to make tea). You then stir the grounds and water, plunge the water through the grounds and you've got an espresso.
You need to dilute the espresso with hot water to get a regular coffee, or dilute it with stirred milk for a cappuccino. I mostly enjoy being able to make my own cappuccinos and save from buying them at gas stations. You can brew up to 4 espressos, use 1 or 2 for your cappuccino and refrigerate the rest for later.

Why Top Employees Quit

Dumb Little Man is a blog that I frequent, and his article post Why Top Employees Quit is very popular on his site, and for good reason. They analyzed the reasons their top performers left by taking historical data from exit interviews and comparing it to annual reviews. The real gem of the article is the comments section, where people have felt anonymous enough to share personal stories about companies they have quit from or employees they have had quit their companies.
It's good for a business to pay attention to exit interviews and anonymous surveys, as they provide helpful benchmarks for worker satisfaction, but as many commenters pointed out, there is plenty of reason to not be completely honest about your satisfaction levels or reasons for leaving.

Free stock images

Laura Milligan has posted a list of 100 legal sites for free stock images on the virtualhosting.com blog. I've been looking for something like this so I can add pictures to some of my posts. Eventually, I hope to get my own pictures up here, but for now I wanted something to add a little dimension.
I had an image from FreeFoto.com, which claims to be the largest collection of photographs on the Internet. They provide a script to paste into your blog or site, and the images remain stored on their server. The actual picture I have here is from Kave wall, a Canadian graphics service company that has a stock portfolio under the Creative Commons License. Other useful places are Open Photo, Flickr: Creative Commons, and Creative Commons Search.

The Day I Walked to Work

I walked to work today.
It feels good to type that. To be honest with you, it would have been much more impressive if I had walked to work a year ago, when I had about a 20 minute commute on the highway. When I got married, I didn't know where my wife would find a job, so I moved closer to my job thinking that way, at least one of us was close to work.
Since moving to less than a mile from work, however, I found myself unable to ditch the car for a more environmentally-and-fitness-friendly walk. Most of my reservations stemmed from having to cross a pedestrian-unfriendly busy roadway. There is a "crosswalk" but no way or telling the light at that you, a pedestrian, intend to cross.
Some of my reservations had to do with my morning routine. From the old apartment I often had trouble getting up and being on time at work. From the new apartment, however, I was able to wake comfortably, get ready leisurely, and get to work on time. My commute decreased from 20-25 minutes down to 3-6 minutes depending on when I got to the light. Several things started to bother me about my newfound driving habits.
On the list was the wear and tear I was putting on my car by driving it back and forth to work without ever reaching its operating temperature. I convinced myself that I was not doing more harm than if I had continued to drive from 20 minutes away, but this never completely satisfied me.
I've also been feeling guilty about global warming and my own daily habits and I want to see if my wife and I can make it on just one car. So with all of these things weighing on my mind, I decided to walk to work.

Have Your Voice Heard in an Investing Book

Ramit Sethi at I Will Teach You To Be Rich, is in the process of writing a book and is looking to feature stories and data from blog readers. You can view his questions here. I've already submitted some of my answers, which I may post later.

Table of Baltimore Family Attractions

I recently moved close to Baltimore, Maryland and after taking family to the Inner Harbor and just walking around, I began to wonder what else there was to do. First let me explain how one can go to the Inner Harbor more than once, and be entertained without paying a single entrance fee.
I already mentioned I recently moved to Baltimore, so it didn't take long to get there. I wouldn't suggest you follow my example if you live farther than two hours from the Harbor. You have to take some friends or family with you, or it won't be much fun at all. If you goalone,you'll feel alone and you'll feel like you've seen everything there is to see way before your feet hurt.
I went on a recent trip to the grocery store with my wife and, as I went searching for cheap dried mangoes, she continued down the regular grocery list. I scoured the store for these delicious bits of heavenly chewy fruitiness, going up aisle after aisle to no avail. It seemed like forever to me, but when I got back to my wife, she was on the third or fourth thing. She hadn't yet made it up an aisle yet. According to market research, most people go around the aisles along the outside wall of the store. We start at that outside wall and then hit the aisles we specifically need. All this to say time seems to go by faster when you're alone than when you have some friends.
So first you need to live close, then you need some friends or relatives.
After that, you just walk around and do the free stuff. You can check out Federal Hill where you get an overlooking view of the Harbor, and then you can look for the singing fudge guys at the Fudgery. After all this, your feet probably hurt and it's time for lunch, so if you haven't quite filled up with fudge, grab a bite at Uno's Pizzeria (one of my favorite places) or any of the other quality food places.
Across the street from Uno's is the Gallery at Haborplace where you can find a food-court with restaurants that are often less crowded than the ones at either Light Street or Pratt Street Pavilions. Harborplace also has clothing shops and shoe stores to look around in. It's a great, open building with a fountain on the first floor.
So there you have it, that's how I manage to take a day trip and not spend much more than I would eating out. Now onto the list. Most of these places I found on Googlemaps where I searched for museums, but some of these places didn't show up there.
The Public Works museum is one such place. When their website was working, I found that tickets cost $3 for adults and are free for children under a certain age (hey, I don't have kids of any age, why should I know the cutoff point? it's just $3). I'd like to go, but I don't know if their website being down means the museum will be closed when you get there or not.

Name	Address	Website
Port Discovery Museum	34 Market Place Baltimore, MD 21202	www.portdiscovery.org
B&O Railroad Museum	901 W Pratt St Baltimore, MD 21223	www.borail.org
Babe Ruth Museum	216 Emory St Baltimore, MD 21230	www.baberuthmuseum.com
Great Blacks in Wax Museum	1601 E North Ave # 3 Baltimore, MD 21213	www.ngbiwm.com
Baltimore Museum of Industry	1415 Key Hwy Baltimore, MD 21230	www.thebmi.org
Homewood House Museum	3400 N Charles St Baltimore, MD 21218	www.museums.jhu.edu/homewood
The Flag House Museum	844 E Pratt St Baltimore, MD 21202	www.flaghouse.org
The National Museum of Dentistry	31 S Greene St Baltimore, MD 21201	www.dentalmuseum.umaryland.edu
Baltimore Civil War Museum	601 S President St Baltimore, MD 21202	www.mdhs.org/explore/baltcivilwar.html
Baltimore Maritime Museum	802 S Caroline St Baltimore, MD 21231	www.baltomaritimemuseum.org/
The Jewish Museum of Maryland	15 Lloyd St Baltimore, MD 21202	www.jhsm.org/
The Carroll Mansion	800 E. Lombard Street Baltimore, MD 21202	www.carrollmuseums.org/Secondary%20Pages/Carroll%20Mansion.htm
The Phoenix Shot Tower	800 E. Lombard Street Baltimore, MD 21202	www.carrollmuseums.org/Secondary%20Pages/Shot%20Tower.htm
Washington Monument & Museum	699 North Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21201	www.baltimoremuseums.org/washington.html
Sports Legend Museum at Camden Yards	301 W Camden St Baltimore, MD 21201	www.baberuthmuseum.com/
American Dime Museum	1808 Maryland Ave Baltimore, MD 21201	www.dimemuseum.net
Baltimore Street Car Museum	1905 Falls Rd Baltimore, MD 21201	www.baltimoremd.com/streetcar/
Fell's Point Maritime Museum	1724 Thames Street Baltimore, MD 21231	www.mdhs.org/explore/maritime/
Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture	830 E Pratt St Baltimore, MD 21202	www.africanamericanculture.org
Contemporary Museum	100 W Centre St Baltimore, MD 21201	www.contemporary.org
Peale Museum	225 Holliday St Baltimore, MD 21202	www.ansp.org/museum/jefferson/otherPages/peale_museum.php
The Maryland Zoo	Druid Hill Park Baltimore, MD 21217	www.marylandzoo.org
Baltimore Public Works Museum	751 Eastern Ave Baltimore, MD 21202	http://www.baltimorepublicworksmuseum.org/ http://baltimoremuseums.org/publicworks.html
Eubie Blake National Jazz Center	847 N Howard St Baltimore, MD 21201	www.eubieblake.org
National Aquarium in Baltimore	501 E Pratt St Baltimore, MD 21202	www.aqua.org

My Investing Strategy

I am not currently purchasing stock, instead I'm focusing any additional money in the family budget on paying back some pesky private student loans. These pesky things have such a high interest rate that it makes little sense for me to invest my money at the moment. There was a time when I was in college and found myself with a little extra money (savvy readers will condemn me for taking out too much in loans, leading to the surplus). Having read entirely too many articles on how good of a company Dell is and how high many Dell investors saw their stocks rise, I bought Dell stock as well. This was the bad stock decision. A good decision would have been made on the basis of their financial statements, market share and unique business idea. The direct-to-consumer is actually an easy method for other companies to copy, so Dell had little uniqueness there. I took the decision to buy Dell stock entirely too lightly, but how to invest was a decision I thought much more about.
There is a good rule of thumb about investing that is akin to cutting out the middle man like Dell has tried to do. The rule is that no more than 2% of the money you choose to invest should go in someone else's pockets. Yearly maintenance fees, and stock broker fees can take a sizable chunk from many portfolios.
I finally went with Sharebuilder because they offer $4 trades and no fees for inactivity. You can buy as much stock as you want (at one time and only one company) and your fee is only $4. Fees to sell are greater, but if you're like me you only want to sell once you made money on your stocks. I would suggest you make sure to buy stock in at least $200 increments so your fees amount to less than 2% of your trades. It's been several years since I bought my Dell stock and the good thing is as long as I keep the basic plan, I don't pay unless I buy or sell stock.
As I stated already, I'm no longer actively buying stock, but that doesn't mean my Sharebuilder account is useless. Quite to the contrary, I've built an emergency fund consisting of three months of expenses which I'm keeping in the under-advertised Sharebuilder Money Market Account. This account was currently earning 4.45% interest, all of which gets credited back to my account without any fees. When and if I need the money, all I need to do is request a Electronic Fund Transfer to my checking account and I have full access to the funds. If you want to buy and hold, Sharebuilder is the way to do it.

Sharing an Internet Connection

Shortly after I moved to my new apartment, my then-fiancé (now wife) graduated college and I now had one internet connection for two computers. The most common way of getting internet to multiple computers these days is using a wireless router. Routers are really mini computers that split an incoming high speed signal to whatever computers are plugged into the unit. Wireless models also broadcast a signal for wireless-equipped laptops. Wireless cards are available for desktops if you don't want to run Ethernet cables all over your house.
I tried the router rout (pun intended) when I was living with a roommate and it worked well. There were a few times when we needed to reset the internet connection to get things working again, but it was reliable for the most part. Routers cost around $50 and you might as well get a wireless one if you ever think you may have a laptop.
I wanted to try a different way for two reasons:
Because I didn't want to spend money on a router, and
Because I couldn't find a router with good user ratings (newegg.com)
I heard that you can share a connection if you have two Ethernet cards, but I also didn't want to buy a second Ethernet card for my computer. I found out my Comcast-issued modem can connect via USB to my computer, so I tried the following setup:
Connect main computer to modem via USB.
Connect Ethernet card from main computer to secondary computer (this requires a Crossover Ethernet cable or a Hub or switch).
At this point it may be useful for you to know that my main computer is running Ubuntu. This is an operating system that replaces Microsoft Windows and Vista. This setup may require additional software if the main computer is running Windows. What I like about running Ubuntu on the main computer is that it provides a first level of protection for our secondary computer. I don't own a Crossover cable, but I do have a switch left over from my College days. This allows me to use regular Ethernet cables and provides the ability to connect up to three more computers behind my main computer. The only downside to this setup is that the main computer needs to be on for my now wife's computer to access the internet.

Why the Medison Celebrity $150 Laptop Has to Be a Scam

If you are reading this, you most likely have heard of a $150 laptop offered by a Swedish company. I was introduced to this great company by Engadget where you can read up on the laptop if you haven't heard about it. You can also visit the laptop-specific company site at medisoncelebrity.com. The company website can be found at medison.se.
Before you get too excited about the price you should know that people have been ordering these things since the Engadget review on July 25th, but haven't seen a thing. The company has never built any other computer for mass sale (no other desktop or laptop models). The company has a sketchy self-declared history in education. I say it's sketchy because they claim to be the first company in Sweeden to give classes in IT and multimedia on a university. That could be believable if the company had been formed well before the date of 1996 given on its history page.
Medison claims to be selling its laptop everywhere in the world "from Sweden to Brazil" as its website claims. But try to click on the links for different languages at the top right of the main page and the only ones not "under construction" are the English and Portuguese (for Brazil) pages. Any company that wants to be taken seriously by consumers needs to translate its pages for their target audiences. The cost to translate those webpages is so small compared to the potential customers that can be reached that you wonder why they haven't done it yet. At the very least I expect a company website to remove links to languages their pages are not available in.
If you look along the border on the left-hand side of the main company page (medison.se) you see a link to bravenet.com, a free web hosting and web tools company. Wait a second, why does a very large multinational company like Medison need free web hosting? Well, because they work with razor-thin profit margins and can't afford even a hundred bucks a year to properly host their corporate site. The text is often filled with typos (I admit, I have them too). I'm no longer trying to figure out what a pedcogical course is as the Medison page and this one (if it's been indexed yet) are the only two sites Google can find using the word. Instead I'll just assume the good people at Medison have taught pedagogical courses at MidSweden University (a very real, verifiable establishment). Various other slips the company has made can be seen at the wikipedia page.
Medison has been able to garner massive amounts of attention by setting a very low price for a product many consumers want to but at the lowest price. The part that gets to me is that whoever is really behind the Medison name doesn't seem to have made any profit yet. All orders for this very cheap product are placed by credit card through a third-party, U.S.-based ordering service. The answer for the reason Medison exists may lie in the "accessories" page of their product website (see here). Medison may be pocketing some handsome profits from clicks made to advertisements on this page. They may never ship a $150 laptop, but maybe they also may never charge anyone's credit card either.
Update:
I missed this news post when I first posted this story. It appears Medison's website was down long enough for people to believe it had folded. It's back up from what I can tell, and the story doesn't seem to have changed much. It appears that 2Checkout.com will not process new orders from Medison. I still hold that Medison is merely making money off of the advertising on the accessories page.

Stock Market Adventures

Over the years I've come across some very interesting internet content. Early in High School, I read over an entire site called The Motley Fool where adults and 40-somethings wrote articles on investing, personal finance, and retirement. It was a great read, and I followed their advice on valuating companies by their balance sheets and other financial fillings. I came up with several good companies but the problem was, I didn't have much money.
Years later while in college, I bought into a pharmaceutical company after they announced the withdrawal of a major money-generating drug. As I watched their announcement, it appeared to me that they were really being honest about the danger of the drug. I was also taken aback by the fact that they were outright withdrawing it without intervention from the FDA. The stock price was dealt a major hit during the next few weeks as I contemplated investing while still in college.
I bought in at the market price and set up an automatic monthly purchase, and in the three and a half year since it's up 30%, and has been paying dividends all along. To be honest though, I didn't invest any great sum, just some money I had left from my student loans. Here is when I got careless however. I purchased stock in Dell, at around $30-$32 per share based solely on reviews at The Motley Fool. If you check what dell is at you'll see I've lost quite a bit. The good news is it's not lost until you sell, but even analysts aren't giving much hope for prices over $32 per share.
All of the loss hasn't been in vain, however. I experienced first hand that investing in the stock market is something that can easily be done by an average person. I've read that many people have a guilty feeling when it comes to investing, retirement and saving for the future. I realize now that the best place for my money is to pay off loans. Until those loans are at lower interests or payed off, I'll be satisfied in knowing I am able to buy more shares of Dell whenever I want.

When 25% of the population marries the other 75%

I often wondered what's supposed to happen in a polygamist community when an equal number of males and females are born. As this article points out, boys in polygamist communities face a difficult life. For polygamy like this to work, the community needs to have fewer men. How many fewer men? Well, they claim every man needs 3 wives to make it to heaven. That means 3 times more women then men in their communities. Apparently this ratio is kept high by holding boys to impossible standards and expelling them from their families and community when those standards are not met. Where as most women we hear about leaving polygamous communities have in essence ran away from their homes, most men have been expelled.
Ignoring the fact that leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have many more then the 3 "required" wives, we assume 3 women to every man.
If there are 99 women and 99 men in a generation, only 33 men in that generation will be able to achieve the "required" 3 wives. I think theses statistics point both to the problem of boys being sent away from home and men "marrying" outside their generation.