Friday, July 30, 2010

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AMD tops Nvidia in graphics chip shipments | Nanotech - The <b>...</b>

AMD passed Nvidia in graphics chip shipments in the second quarter, according to a marketing research firm. Read this blog post by Brooke Crothers on Nanotech - The Circuits Blog.

Jennifer Lopez signs deal to become new &#39;American Idol&#39; judge <b>...</b>

Jennifer Lopez has inked a deal to join American Idol's judging panel for its upcoming 10th season, an industry source tells People. The news dropped j...

&#39;Idol&#39; <b>News</b> - The Ellen DeGeneres Show

Ellen, I have to say I was surprised by this news, as I LOVED watching you with the kids on Idol. You will definitely be missed on the show. I respect your decision, however, and only want happiness for you. You have made me laugh, ...



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AMD tops Nvidia in graphics chip shipments | Nanotech - The <b>...</b>

AMD passed Nvidia in graphics chip shipments in the second quarter, according to a marketing research firm. Read this blog post by Brooke Crothers on Nanotech - The Circuits Blog.

Jennifer Lopez signs deal to become new &#39;American Idol&#39; judge <b>...</b>

Jennifer Lopez has inked a deal to join American Idol's judging panel for its upcoming 10th season, an industry source tells People. The news dropped j...

&#39;Idol&#39; <b>News</b> - The Ellen DeGeneres Show

Ellen, I have to say I was surprised by this news, as I LOVED watching you with the kids on Idol. You will definitely be missed on the show. I respect your decision, however, and only want happiness for you. You have made me laugh, ...


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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

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Fwix Aggregates Hyper-Local <b>News</b> for Nearby and Relevant Stories

Fwix is a news aggregation service focused on dishing the dirt on hyper-local news stories to help you stay on top of what's happening right in your backyard. Fwix is available both in the US and select countries abroad.

New Leak Found on Gulf Coast « Liveshots

The Coast Guard is responding to a new oil leak on the Gulf Coast. This spill involves a well in.

eBook <b>News</b>: Wylie/Amazon; Penguin Earnings; Copyright Office <b>...</b>

eBook News: Wylie/Amazon; Penguin Earnings; Copyright Office Announcement & e-Books. + Authors Guild on the economics of the Wylie/Amazon agreement – a 300% increase in author income?; may give Amazon too much power (via TeleRead) ...



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Fwix Aggregates Hyper-Local <b>News</b> for Nearby and Relevant Stories

Fwix is a news aggregation service focused on dishing the dirt on hyper-local news stories to help you stay on top of what's happening right in your backyard. Fwix is available both in the US and select countries abroad.

New Leak Found on Gulf Coast « Liveshots

The Coast Guard is responding to a new oil leak on the Gulf Coast. This spill involves a well in.

eBook <b>News</b>: Wylie/Amazon; Penguin Earnings; Copyright Office <b>...</b>

eBook News: Wylie/Amazon; Penguin Earnings; Copyright Office Announcement & e-Books. + Authors Guild on the economics of the Wylie/Amazon agreement – a 300% increase in author income?; may give Amazon too much power (via TeleRead) ...


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Monday, July 26, 2010

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And yet, The Hollywood Reporter finds the movie market gurus slightly embarrassed at what they call the “family stampede.” Family films have well outpaced pre-release projections repeatedly since May, and the studio bosses are puzzled over why these movies “outperform” their guesses. "The simplest answer is that the tracking doesn't include the young kids themselves," Disney distribution boss Chuck Viane said.


"It's just harder to get a handle on what kids are thinking," another brilliant marketer guessed. "Tracking surveys are based on what people express in phone and Internet surveys, and you're not going to find the young kids that way." Pre-release tracking surveys focus on parents. "The nag factor is what drives those kind of movies," a studio executive tartly declared. "The parents might be less inclined than the kids to see a picture, but then the kids pester the parents, and the rest is history."


So why don’t the studio bosses start factoring in the possibility of a “nag factor” from young children, wanting to go to the movies with parents who demand quality for their children, and make some movies accordingly? No million-dollar marketing exec has thought of that yet?


"There can be a disconnect in tracking sometimes about how far a picture will reach across all audiences," said Sony distribution president Rory Bruer, whose gone-to-China remake of "The Karate Kid" debuted last month with a much-better-than expected $55.7 million. "There's no doubt that word-of-mouth is important in that aspect." Maybe the studio underestimated the affinity of parents for the first version of the film, released back in 1984. It's well on its way to grossing $200 million.


Sometimes, pre-tracking surveys are wrong the other way, overestimating turnout. Last fall, pre-release surveys suggested the Michael Jackson tribute film “This Is It” could ring up “$40 million or more” on its first weekend. The actual figure was a lot less: $23 million.


“Despicable Me” is a great example of the “out-performed expectations” story line. The Universal cartoon with the inept bald-headed villain who learns to love and parent three young girls grossed $56.4 million in its opening weekend, although the “experts” expected a much lower $30 to $35 million weekend.


"People think it was a whole host of things contributing to the big opening," one executive told the Hollywood Reporter. "You had some fresh-looking characters, funny trailers and a huge boost from running those trailers with other hit family films over the past several weeks." Surveys had suggested “tepid” interest from consumers.


Anyone watching NBC or Universal's cable channels were subjected to repeated on-screen promos during their favorite shows. NBC also ran a 30-minute “behind the scenes” infomercial on the opening night of the film, since Friday night TV in the summertime isn't a hot spot for advertisers.


Only one R-rated movie has grossed over $100 million this year, the Leonardo di Caprio horror flick “Shutter Island.” It has just been squeezed out of the top ten by “Despicable Me.” Three movies have grossed over $300 million to top the 2010 list: “Toy Story 3” (a daring G), “Alice in Wonderland” (PG), and “Iron Man 2” (PG-13). Three more movies have grossed over $200 million: “Twilight: The Eclipse Saga” (PG-13) and the family cartoons “Shrek Forever After” (PG) and “How to Train Your Dragon” (PG).


Why can’t greedy Hollywood just look at the math and put their money where the American public’s eyes want to go?


Here’s what should follow: more respect from the movie awards shows for these animated films. “Toy Story 3" drew rave reviews across the board. The St. Petersburg Times said it “isn't merely the best movie of the summer -- even with summer just kicking in -- but an immediate candidate for best of the year.” Don’t bet the mortgage.


NewsBusters is turning 5. Enter our free t-shirt contest to help us celebrate!

Susan Payton is the President of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an Internet marketing firm. She blogs at The Marketing Eggspert Blog. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing. Download her newest e-book, “Content is Queen: How Article & Blog Writing Will Increase Your Sales.“

Companies love positive feedback. They share it on Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter, post it on their website and use it as marketing fodder. But what about when feedback is, well, less than pleasant? What can you do with a handful (or more) of irate customers? Do you ignore them? Bury them out back? Not in today’s social atmosphere.

Rather than try to sweep these unhappy customers under the rug, look at them as a challenge and an opportunity to improve your brand and leverage them for some publicity.

Why You Want Angry Customers

Well, maybe you don’t want angry customers, but let’s be honest — you’ll never have 100 percent customer satisfaction. No one does. So use those unhappy customers to better understand what you’re doing wrong, and learn from the experience. And while you’re at it, turn the angry customers into brand evangelists.

There are several ways to connect with unhappy customers in a meaningful way:

  • Hold a panel or forum in person; give them a tour of your facility and hold a venting session
  • Work virtually; host an online panel to get feedback from them
  • Work one-on-one to understand their concerns and address them individually

In-Person Events

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Dell recently held its first Customer Advisory Panel event at their headquarters in Round Rock, TX. They invited two groups of 15 bloggers and social media gurus. One group was full of people who had negative experiences with the company and who were vocal about their displeasure. The second group was made up of people that Dell considered brand evangelists; people who loved Dell and told others.

The attendees started the morning with their gripes; customer service issues came up again and again. The heads of customer service and marketing were present and actively engaged. As they listened, they took notes, then asked questions and they promised they would make changes.

That type of customer empowerment is important. Now, whether they’ll go through with the promised changes is another story, but it was clear that Dell understood it was time to start paying attention to the public’s perception of its brand, and make some changes to keep their customers.

Nestlé is another company that has been successful at holding an event to let people engage with its brand directly. After a resurgence in interest in the Nestle Boycott a few years ago, Nestlé decided to invite a group of bloggers to what it called its “Happy, Healthy Gathering” in 2009. Mommy bloggers, who’d been tweeting up a storm about the company’s stance on breastfeeding in third world countries, were invited to tour the facilities and give their input on the company.

Whether the event truly changed perceptions remains to be seen, but it did a great deal to show that Nestlé was putting in the effort to reach its audience.

Disclosure: I was one of the bloggers invited to participate Dell’s Customer Advisory Panel.

Virtual Panels

Virtual panels are decidedly less effective than in-person ones. But they can be good replacements for focus groups. Pssst is General Mills’ online testing ground for new products. The company sends participants coupons and free products to try, and in return they are asked to fill out surveys. The program is so successful that bloggers who write about saving money are gladly turning others onto joining Pssst.

Similarly, the Starbucks Passion Panel was designed to get customer feedback — for better or worse. The community of Starbucks drinkers gives their input via surveys and forums.

Passion Panel member Jennifer Boyd said, “Being on the Passion Panel means that I have access to direct input and discussion with other members. It enables me to give my opinion on Starbucks’ current and future products through surveys. The panel is a great way to engage with their loyal customers and solidifies a relationship with a consumer to a brand.”

Wal-Mart’s Elevenmoms platform is another example of how a mix of online community, shopper experience and in-person visits can work together to help the company gather new insights. John Andrews, former Senior Manager of Emerging Media for Wal-Mart and founder of the Elevenmoms, said the community succeeded in getting Wal-Mart’s attention in a few areas where it was lacking.

When the iPhone was launched in Wal-Mart stores, the Elevenmoms were invited to go through the purchase process. Some had no problems, but others did. It took one blogger two hours to buy a phone. Each blogger published her experience, and Wal-Mart took the feedback to its operations staff, who took notes and improved the purchase process.

“The Elevenmoms used direct social media interaction to improve the shopping process,” said Andrews.

Other feedback caused Wal-Mart to reconsider its layaway strategy. Having canceled the layaway plan due to costs, Wal-Mart got some flack from the Elevenmoms, who felt it made it easier to make big purchases. As a result, Wal-Mart developed its Site to Store platform, which provided the benefit of layaway online, so that local stores didn’t incur extra costs.

Disclosure: John Andrews now works with Collective Bias, a company with which I have collaborated on projects.

One-on-One

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Solving a customer’s problems and changing their perception individually is the least cost-effective method, but a little work goes a long way. And it starts with customer service personnel being properly trained to solve problems, and not to simply stick to “the script” at all costs. Look at Zappos or Disney for great examples of how service reps are empowered to solve problems.

Disney empowers each of its “cast members” (staff) to solve a guest’s problem. From the street sweeper to the reservation specialist, everyone has the ability to turn a negative situation into a good one. That might mean replacing a fallen ice cream cone, upgrading a guest’s hotel room, or simply answering politely the most commonly asked question on Disney property: what time is the three o’clock parade?

Disney is so good at customer service, they’ve opened the Disney Institute, a customer service training program helps other corporations use the same techniques that has made Disney such a success.

Likewise, Zappos is also famous for its customer service tactics. The reps don’t use scripts, and seem to genuinely care about solving problems. Many customers are pleasantly surprised when their shipping gets upgraded and they get their shoes even faster – at no additional charge.

By providing instant happiness to the customer, these brands can prevent a lot of the bad karma that comes down the road when an unhappy customer becomes an enraged customer who tells everyone he knows about how bad the company is (no one wants their own version of DellHell).

Conclusion

No matter how you interact with unhappy customers, the point is not to brush them off, and make sure you learn from it. Don’t just pretend to listen and then go on doing business as usual. Take the feedback as constructive criticism that can help you determine your company’s future. How you handle your failures could make you or break you.

More Business Resources from Mashable

- HOW TO: Evaluate Your Social Media Plan/> - Why Your Next Business Card May Be Virtual/> - HOW TO: Improve B2B Sales Productivity with Social Media/> - HOW TO: Use Social Media for Lead Generation/> - HOW TO: Use QR Codes for Small Business Marketing

Stock: Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, biffspandex

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<b>News</b> Roundup: Gabriel Macht Joins USA Network Pilot, &#39;Glee&#39; Casts <b>...</b>

Gabriel Macht, known to many for his role in 'The Spirit,' is getting a very 'Legal' state of mind. Macht has joined the cast of USA.

Going Global: George Stephanopoulos And ABC <b>News</b> Execs Discuss New <b>...</b>

Earlier this week, ABC News launched a new iPad application that adds a twist to the way most apps present the news: a third dimension. Fire up the app and you're immediately faced with a nifty-looking globe that's covered in headlines ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: &#39;Afghan War Diary&#39; — Wikileaks massive <b>...</b>

Note which news-blond(e)s trash Wikileaks. (I'm looking at you, Chuck Todd; prove me wrong.) Those that do — list them as unreliable. They're part of the War Sales Team. Operatives. I'll have more. This exposes a whole layer of analysis ...



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Sunday, July 25, 2010

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Colorado <b>News</b>: The Week In Review (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

It's been a wild week for Colorado politics, as major developments the three most-watched statewide primaries have changed the face of the races and brought national attention to Colorado. We've recapped some of the week's biggest ...

Carl Cameron, Fox <b>News</b> Correspondent, Reportedly Says Channel <b>...</b>

A top Fox News correspondent reportedly said he agrees that the channel supports the Tea Party. The Daily Beast's Steve Friess reports that he witnessed a conversation between Daily Kos blogger Dante Atkins and Fox News chief political ...

Premier League <b>News</b>, Daily Ticker: July 24 | EPL Talk

Vidic Signs Long Term Deal With Manchester United Nemanja Vidic has secured his future at Old Trafford with a long-term deal. Manchester United held off.


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Thursday, July 22, 2010

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Fox <b>News</b> - Shirley Sherrod | Coverage | Myth - Resigned | Mediaite

Many people from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to Shirley Sherrod herself have implied Fox News was a driving force behind propping up Andrew Breitbart's out-of-context video that forced her to resign. A more correct assessment might be that ...

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: July 22, 2010 (Audio)

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Kansas heat wave kills 2000 cattle; Hundreds of dead penguins wash up on Brazilian coast; Does Egypt own the Nile? water battle brewing; Poo Power: generating electricity from sewage?; ...

Reid Abandons Cap &amp; Trade in Face of Bipartisan Opposition « The <b>...</b>

Hitting a wall of bipartisan opposition to placing a price on carbon, even if just in the utility.



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Fox <b>News</b> - Shirley Sherrod | Coverage | Myth - Resigned | Mediaite

Many people from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to Shirley Sherrod herself have implied Fox News was a driving force behind propping up Andrew Breitbart's out-of-context video that forced her to resign. A more correct assessment might be that ...

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: July 22, 2010 (Audio)

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Kansas heat wave kills 2000 cattle; Hundreds of dead penguins wash up on Brazilian coast; Does Egypt own the Nile? water battle brewing; Poo Power: generating electricity from sewage?; ...

Reid Abandons Cap &amp; Trade in Face of Bipartisan Opposition « The <b>...</b>

Hitting a wall of bipartisan opposition to placing a price on carbon, even if just in the utility.


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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

manage personal finances




Five Best Personal Money Management Sites





Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.


Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.


Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.


Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)


Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.


Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)


As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.


Mint (Free)


Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.


ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)




ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.


Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)


Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.



Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:





Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.





Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.



Web technology has revolutionized finance by making it easier than ever to monitor cash flow and track trends in your spending. Mint.com has been a leader in this realm for personal finance: its technology helps you track multiple accounts, analyze spending trends, and manage financial goals.

There isn’t a clear counterpart to class='blippr-nobr'>Mintclass="blippr-nobr">Mint for businesses, though. That’s where inDinero, a Y-Combinator-funded startup, comes in.

inDinero, which launches today, is a web-based financial dashboard for small businesses. Like Mint, it aggregates financial data from bank accounts, investments, and other sources and places them in a simple, easy-to-navigate interface where you can quickly see your income, spending, recent activity, and your financial runway.

The app is divided into five parts: Dashboard, Income, Spending, Planning and Trends. Dashboard provides an overview of your business finances, Income provides detailed information about your income streams, Spending breaks down your different costs, Planning helps you set goals for your business, and Trends analyzes and graphs out spending and income trends in order to provide useful insights.

Businesses need this type of information in order to minimize costs while maximizing revenues. While solutions such as Mint also aggregate financial information and analyze it, they are not focused on small businesses. We look forward to seeing inDinero’s business toolset grow and evolve.

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, jwohlfeil

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Panasonic launches Lumix DMC-FZ45 digital superzoom: Digital <b>...</b>

Panasonic launches Lumix DMC-FZ45 digital superzoom: Along with the DMC-FZ100, Panasonic has also announced the Lumix DMC-FZ40 superzoom (FZ45 in Europe). Slotting in where the FZ38/35 left off, it features the same 25-600mm equiv. lens ...

Recycled &#39;NCIS&#39; Story Linked To Entertainment <b>News</b> Outsourcing In <b>...</b>

CBS brass got an unpleasant surprise on Sunday when Google News led its entertainment section with a story titled Quartet of 'NCIS' Co-Stars In CBS Limbo. It was dated July 17, labeled exclusive and carried a byline, Elizar Caraelce. ...

The iPad just got a game changing <b>news</b> reader, it&#39;s called Flipboard.

It offers a way to “flip” through news, photos and updates from what your friends on Facebook and Twitter are sharing. Rather than scrolling through posts and links, Flipboard organises everything shared into a magazine like format, ...



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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

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To hear Sarah Palin tell it, she and her mama grizzlies are people-powered, grassroots examples of how Americans can get involved in politics. But a close look at SarahPAC's campaign finance report shows she spends her donations on the same old, standard consultants as every other politician. And like many others, she still finds ways to keep her inner circle in the money.



She pulled in just shy of $866,000 in donations from people hailing from Kissimmee, Florida to Rancho Palos Verdes, California. But Marylander Laurie Beitman's $35 and the bulk of Palin's small-dollar donations is going to more than Republican candidates the former Alaska governor wants to see win this fall. By our count, Palin spent nearly $400,000 on consultants, lobbying firms and the standard direct mail and fundraising firms politicians frequently use. (The AP had a stricter consulting tally, $210,000.) Just about the only maverick-style item she purchased was $4,000 worth of sausage.


Palin spent $30,000 on "consulting, national and international issues" with Randy Scheunemann's Orion Strategies, a lobbying firm representing foreign governments.



Then there's Rebecca Mansour's Aries Petra Consulting, which Palin paid $22,000 for "internet messaging" to write those infamous Palin Facebook messages. Politico describes Mansour as a "Los Angeles screenwriter and political neophyte whose creation of the popular cheerleading blog Conservatives4Palin endeared her to Palin's inner circle."



She paid NorthStar Strategies, the firm owned by her campaign body man and former Bush administration alum Jason Recher $36,000 for "logistics political consulting."



Former press aide Meg Stapleton's IzzyLene Consulting received $2,500 for media consulting.



Palin paid $35,000 to Grey Strategies, a Columbus firm that helped her with media, logistics and political consulting. It appears to now be a newly merged firm called Grey Shockley, run by lobbyists Doug McMarlin and Leslie Beyer. According to Hotline on Call, McMarlin also travels with Palin.



True North L'Attitudes, a consulting firm created in February by an Anchorage woman named Robyn Engibous, got more than $10,000 for scheduling. Engibous, a former staffer for Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), also got almost $1,400 in reimbursements for office supplies and mileage.



Palin has made much of her personal wealth in speaking fees, which reportedly run up to $100,000 per speech. For speechwriting services this past quarter, her PAC paid $3,700 to Lindsay Hayes. Hayes wrote speeches for Palin during the presidential campaign; she also was a speechwriter for Sen. Stevens for several years.



SarahPAC gave another $5,000 for "clerical" work to Ivy Frye, a close confidant of Palin's who has been with her since her campaign for governor and who Palin hired as an aide in the governor's office. In addition to the $5,000, SarahPAC gave Frye almost $1,500 to reimburse her for postage and copies. In the first quarter of 2010, she paid Frye $15,000 for clerical work and more than $3,000 in reimbursement for printing and shipping costs.



The PAC also pays a $10,000 monthly legal retainer, totaling $30,000 for the quarter, to the Palin family lawyer, Thomas Van Flein. Van Flein was Palin's personal lawyer while she was governor, defending her against ethics complaints. He also represented Palin's daughter, Bristol Palin, when she tried to get child support from Levi Johnston earlier this year.



Check out our past coverage of Palin's "brain trust" of advisers here.









Why is Mint.com Citing a Racist Website in an Immigration Blog Post?





Mint.com, the free personal finance site, put up a weirdly strident anti-immigration post on its Mintlife blog on Wednesday. Turns out, it's not just tacky, it's poorly-sourced—down to a citation for the openly racist anti-immigration site VDare.com.


Timothy Lee, writing on Megan McArdle's blog at the Atlantic website, flagged the bizarre Mintlife post, which is credited to Ross Crooks. Why bizarre? Well, as Lee points out, it's odd that a service site like Mint would take such a stridently anti-immigration stance. But worse, the chart is flat-out wrong—and peculiarly sourced:




The most jarring name on this list is the openly racist vdare.com. The rest of the list is a mix of official government sources, non-profits, and blogs. The sources skew heavily in an anti-immigrant direction, although at least one is a pro-immigrant source (fiscalpolicy.org). While none of the other anti-immigrant sources is as offensive as vdare, few (if any) of them could be considered credible sources for statistics about immigration.



Lee goes on to run down the problems with the infographic's statistics—which are many. You can check out the post here.


Mint was bought by software makers Intuit—the company behind the Quicken finance software—last fall. It seems pretty unlikely that a big company like Intuit is looking to piss off costumers who (having paid attention in economics class) believe that immigration improves, rather than harms, a country's economy. So what happened here? Is Crooks an anti-immigrant true believer who got carried away, or just a guy who didn't know much about the issue and doesn't have a great eye for credible sources? Or is "immigration is bad" official Mint.com policy now? Any way you slice it, Mint doesn't look good.


Update: MintLife Editor Lee Sherman responded to us with an apology:



At MintLife, our mission is to give users and visitors the financial information they need to save and do more with their money. Topics range from personal finance advice, to analysis of macroeconomic trends and the fiscal impacts of news of the day. We publish content from a variety of contributors and sources, and the opinions expressed don't necessarily reflect those ofMint.com or of Intuit.


It's true that the tone is often provocative, seeking to engage readers in dialogue around important topics, but the recent blog post "The Economic Impact of Immigration" went too far, cited polarized sources and did not receive the editorial judgment and oversight it deserved.


We regret it. It is completely unacceptable and won't happen again. Our intention was not to further the agenda of any of the sources from which data was pulled, and the post has been removed.


- Lee Sherman, Editor of MintLife



[Mint.com; The Atlantic]





Send an email to Max Read, the author of this post, at max@gawker.com.





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Dave Ramsey has had a great amount of success with his radio show that teaches good old fashioned common sense financial advice. He is certainly not without his detractors though. There are a lot of people who describe his advice as out of the main stream and mathematically incorrect. Both of these statements are true, but that is precisely why he has gotten so popular. Ramsey has made an observation that very few people have. Personal finance is much more about personal behavior than it is knowledge about money itself.

Ramsey is often criticized for teaching people to do things which technically defy mathematics. Recently one blog called Territory Michigan attacked Ramsey for suggesting that people pay off all their debt. The blogger gives an example in which a person with a low interest rate student loan can make more money in a money market and pocket the difference then pay the loan off payment by payment over the next decade.

This is where this blogger and many other of Ramsey's critics get it wrong. Ramsey often makes the statement on his show that, "If we were doing mathematics, you wouldn't have borrowed money in the first place!" Often people will ask him if they should pay off their debt largest interest rate to smallest, but he teaches that you should pay off your debts smallest principal balance to largest. The reason he teaches this is because personal finance is much more about behavior than any knowledge you know about finance. Paying off a few small debts first will give you some easy wins, making you feel that, hey, this plan really works, and will encourage you to continue!

People who criticize him often aren't thinking straight, because they do not factor in risk which is a needed part to any financial calculation. You could go to Vegas and put all of your money on 28 black, but you know you wouldn't do this because there's so much risk of not winning, even though the rate of return would be enormous! Whenever you borrow money, there's risk involved that somehow you will get behind because of a financial problem, or that the company will mess with you financially (it does happen!).

These critics often also use very unrealistic examples. The blogger at Territory Michigan uses an example of a 3% student loan, which almost no one has! Dave Ramsey's mathematics may be incorrect, but they actually work! He has over 3 million listeners and is a multi-millionaire. His teachings have gotten hundreds of thousands of people out of debt, they work! Who are you going to listen to, a critic with a Weblog, or a guy with a lot of money and thousands of success stories?





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Monday, July 19, 2010

personal finance manager





Seven secrets of coupon pros [Consumer Reports] "Nancy Niemeyer, an IT project manager from Seattle, says she feeds her family of four for about $10 a week."

5 cheap places to retire in the US [MSN Money] "An expert offers his top picks, taking costs, culture and access to medical care into consideration."

How 5 money blunders ding your credit [Smart Spending] "FICO calls them 'damage points,' and, boy, can they pull down your credit score."

10 Things Funeral Directors Won't Tell You [Smart Money] "The best defense? Shop around, or have someone who is up to it do it for you."

7 Lessons the World Cup Offers on the Stock Market [Wall Street Journal] "Here are seven lessons that 'the beautiful game' can teach you about the money game."

— FREE MONEY FINANCE







I met James Montier at a value investment seminar in Italy in 2007 where he presented. We had long discussions later the day and into the evening on value investing and investment strategy.


James was kind enough to put me on his distribution list and I really looked forward to each of his articles as they always taught me something.


Unfortunately James decreased his writings since taking a position with the asset manager GMO in 2010.


I decided to put this resource page together so Eurosharelab visitors can also benefit from James’s investment wisdom.


James Montier’s Amazon Page shows all the books he has authored as well as the following short biography:


James Montier is a member of GMO’s asset allocation team.


Prior to that, he was the co-Head of Global Strategy at Société Générale and has been the top-rated strategist in the annual Thomson Extel survey for most of the last decade.


Montier is the author of four market-leading books:


• The Little Book of Behavioral Investing: How not to be your own worst enemy (Little Book, Big Profits)


• Behavioral Finance: Insights into Irrational Minds and Markets


• Behavioral Investing: A Practitioners Guide to Applying Behavioral Finance


• Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment


He is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Durham and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.


2010


In this May 2010 article called I Want to Break Free, or, Strategic Asset Allocation does not equal Static Asset Allocation James Montier talks about in the beginning investing was a simpler and happier.


The essence of investment was to seek out value; to buy what was cheap with a margin of safety. Investors could move up and down the capital structure (from bonds to equities) as they saw fit. If nothing fit the criteria for investing, then cash was the default option.


But that changed with the rise of modern portfolio theory and, not coincidentally, the rise of “professional investment managers” and consultants.


In March 2010 Miguel Barbosa in his Simolean Sense blog interviewed James Montier about his book Value Investing: Tools & Techniques For Intelligent Investing.


In the second part of the interview Miguel talks to James about his other book The Little Book of Behavioral Investing – How Not To Be Your Own Worst Enemy.


In this February 2010 article, the first since joining GMO, James Montier asks Was It All Just A Bad Dream? Or, Ten Lessons Not Learnt from the financial crisis.


2009


In November 2009 article titled Only White Swans on the Road to Revulsion James Montier makes the argument that that the housing bubble and the crisis following its collapse was not an unforeseen event but rather the result of over optimism and the illusion of control, two classic human behavioural mistakes.


This article is the text of a speech called Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, or how EMH has damaged our industry which James Montier delivered at the at the August 2009 CFA UK conference on “What ever happened to EMH”. Dedicated to Peter Bernstein (EMH = Efficient Market Hypothesis)


Here is the video recording of the above mentioned speech by James Montier: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. The video is 42 minutes long, but well worth watching.


The financial times in this 24 June 2009 article EMH, AMH: Edwards and Montier ride again motions James Montier leaving Societe Generale to join US investment manager Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Co, just after he and Albert Edwards won the Thomson Extel European analysts award in May 2009 as the top global strategy team.


In this 2 June 2009 research paper Forever blowing bubbles: moral hazard and melt-up James Montier explored the bubble phenomenon and what happens in the future after a bubble pops. He explores the possibility that all the government rescue packages initiated in 2008 have the possibility to again inflate a substantial bubble.


In this 24 June 2009 Financial Times article called Insight: Efficient markets theory is dead. James Montier explains why the efficient markets theory is dead but still lives because of academic inertia.


In June 2009 James Montier’s published this list of his Favorite Investment Books as well as a Summer reading list of more recent titles.


In May 2009 shortly after the market started its recovery from its March 9 2009 lows James Montier in this article titled Sucker’s rally or the birth of a bull? asks if this is a suckers rally and if so what investors could do to protect themselves. He also gives a few short ideas from his shorting screen.


In this 27 January 2009 article Clear and present danger: the trinity of risk, James Montier writes about the three primary and interrelated sources of investment risk; Valuation risk, business or earnings risk and balance sheet or financial risk.



2008


In this excellent review of James Montier’s book – Behavioral Investing: A Practitioner’s Guide to Applying Behavioral Finance, Bruce Grantier summarises the main points of the book with emphasis on mistakes and biases followed by a discussion of number of behavioral phenomena.


In the article The psychology of bear markets published in December 2009, during the brunt of the bear market James Montier writes about that the mental barriers to effective decision-making in bear markets are as many and varied as those that plague rationality during bull markets but that they more pronounced as fear and shock limits logical analysis.


In this 25 Nov 2008 article called The road to revulsion and the creation of value, James Montier argues that the road to revulsion – sharply declining prices – ends in an investment nirvana with unambiguously cheap assets.


In this 25 November 2008 Bloomberg article Montier Has ‘Never Been More Bullish’ on Stocks James Montier makes the cast that stocks are “distinctly cheap” because they trade at 15.4 times the 10-year moving average of its companies’ profits, compared with an average of 18 for the U.S. market since 1881.James wrote that fifteen stocks in the U.S. index, pass his test for “deep value,” while a tenth of shares in Europe and a fifth in Asia qualify.


In this 27 October 2008 article – An admission of ignorance: a humble approach to investing James Montier details his investment strategy.


It makes no sense to forecast, the importance of a margin of safety, avoid trying to time the market and buy cheap insurance. But most importantly, humility should be the central theme of a good investment process.


In this October 22nd, 2008 Financial Times blog post by Paul Murphy summarises an article Analysts are rubbish by James Montier about the bullish bias built in to the investment industry by the analysts and that analysts are exceptionally good at one thing and one thing only – telling you what has just happened.


In this 9 September 2008 article – The dangers of DCF James Montier writes about the dangers Of Discount cash flow (DCF) saying its implementation is riddled with problems but the good news is that several alternatives exist.


In this 23 June 2008 article – You are still wasting your time, or, are analysts just overpaid secretaries? James Montier writes about the whether company visits are useful for fund managers. The answer in general is no but they can be improved by learning to look for evidence that disagrees with us, and seek to disprove our ideas, rather than illustrate them with supportive evidence.


In this article The Road To Revulsion 16 June 2008 James Montier writes about bubbles, that bubbles are a by-product of human behaviour, and that human behaviour is sadly all too predictable.


The details of each bubble are different but the general patterns remain very similar. He also touches on the propensity for commentators to continually proclaim the end of the problem and a resumption of business as usual.


In the 30 May 2008 article Inflation Not The Problem Albert Edwards and James Montier explain why they are sceptical of all the market commentators saying that the worse market decline of the recession was over. How right they were, but it’s the way they arrived at their conclusion that makes the article worthwhile reading.


If you have any interest at all in short selling this is an article for you. On 26 May 2008, with the markets particularly overvalued James Montier turned his thinking to short selling writing Joining The Dark Side: Pirates, Spies and Short Sellers.


In the article he explains a simple short screen with surprising results shown through back testing in the USA and Europe.


In the article with the catchy title Asleep at the wheel, or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb published on 7 April 2008 James Montier points out that company management and analysts are unwilling to revise their profit estimates in spite of the looming recession as everyone thinks their business is recession resistant. He points out that this is why they are all overoptimistic and how you can avoid falling into the same trap.


In this 13 March 2008 research article called Remember, Cassandra was right! James Montier makes a strong argument that the mess in the US economy and housing market was not caused by a black swan event (unpredictable) but rather was sadly predictable.


It follows the standard pattern of a bubble deflating, some thing that we have seen a thousand times before.


On 12 January 2008 James made the last post on his blog called Behavioural Investing – The application of psychology to finance and the home of an investing sceptic.


The articles he wrote is luckily all still there and it’s a real treasure trove of information.


In this 15 January 2008 article The Dash To Trash And The Grab For Growth James Montier wrote just shortly after the absolute peak in the 2008 bull market he suggests that if you cannot move to cash because of career risk then invest in large dividend paying companies as what is going to happen to growth stocks at already high valuations is not going to be pretty. How right he was.


2007


In this blog post called The Sources of Value, written in October 2007 James Montier analyses which of the component sources of return leads to value, over reasonable periods of time, to outperform growth?


On 3 October 2007 James Montier posted a blog article titled Sector rotation: an investment dead end? He argues that investors focusing on sectors rather than stocks are barking up the wrong tree.


James Montier’s book Behavioural investing: a practitioner’s guide to applying behavioural finance was published in September 2007. At the link above you can read parts of the book at Google Books.


In this 24 September 2007 blog post called The myth of exogenous risk and the recent quant problems James Montier argues that many aspect of investment risk are endogenous (like a gambler playing poker, where the actions of the other plays are integral to the game) to the way in which we invest.


The problems experienced by the quant funds in August may help highlight some of these issues.


In this 10 September 2007 blog post Yet more evidence on the folly of forecasting, or why we don’t need economists! James Montier presents even more evidence that humans cannot forecast and why you should avoid listening to anyone who says he can as well as avoid it yourself.


On 21 August 2007 James Montier posted a blog article titled Earnings manipulation as a source of short ideas. He identifies shorting candidates through a measurement called the M score. Past results are impressive in identifying under-performing companies.


On 15 March 2007 James Montier posted a Macro Research article titled Global Equity Strategy . Investing 101: A reading list. Here he comes up with a collection of his best books in different categories (classics, modern, psychological and hidden gems) that is arguably the best reading list for any aspiring investor.


In the 30 January 2007 article by James Montier CAPM is CRAP James says that the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is insidious. It creeps into almost every discussion on finance. And them he goes on to systematically take the model apart with real life examples and evidence.


In his 10 January 2007 research paper Contrarian or conformist? James Montier, in his usual style puts himself against the common view saying that the then biggest consensus portfolio bets to him seemed to be small cap and low quality however large cap, high quality looks like the better bet to him. To emphasise he quotes Sir John Templeton once observed, “It is impossible to produce a superior performance unless you do something different from the majority”.


2006


In this 30 November 2006 article with the enticing title Improving returns using inside information James Montier explains the results of a unknown but interesting research paper on share buybacks and how they, when implemented, are a powerful indicator for positive returns.


In this July 2006 research note titled Come out of the closet, or, show me the alpha James features a study that suggests

closet indexing accounts for nearly one third of the US mutual fund industry. Stock pickers account for less than 30% of the market, yet they have real investment skill. A fascinating read.


The article Prophet Among Pinstripes in the April 2006 issue of Fastcompany magazine features James Montier where he gives his five laws about investing bias, evolution, and true happiness.


In March 2006 shortly after the release of Joel Greenblatt’s book The Little Book That Beats the Market James tested the strategy worldwide and in this article called The little note that beats the markets found that on average the Little Book strategy

beats the markets by around 7% p.a. between 1993-2005, and with lower risk than the market! Value plus quality seems to make sense.


In the article Behaving Badly published in February 2006 James Montier features a short test you can take after which you will also become a strong believer in behavioural finance. Give it a try!


2005


In November 2005 James Montier wrote the article Seven Sins of Fund Management – A behavioural critique where he explores some of the more obvious behavioural weaknesses inherent in the ‘average’ investment process.


For example he writes that the first sin was placing forecasting at the very heart of the investment process. An enormous amount of evidence suggests that investors are generally hopeless at forecasting. So using forecasts as an integral part of the investment process is like tying one hand behind your back before you start.


In this 31 March 2005 article called Bargain Hunter James Montier confesses that he is an unabashed value investor. He adds that if the reader does not share this viewpoint, or isn’t open to be persuaded of the merits of such an approach, he should stop reading now for what follows will only distress his.


James teams up with Rui Antunes his “usual accomplice and compatriot in adventures involving large amounts of data” and embarked upon an investigation of value strategies.


In the article Abu Ghraib: Lessons from behavioural finance and for corporate governance, wrote at the end of January 2005 James Montier says even though it is tempting to believe bad behaviour is the result of a few rotten individuals. However, the overwhelming psychological evidence suggests that if you put good people into bad situations they usually turn bad.


2004


In the June 2004 paper If it makes you happy James Montier leaves investment advice aside and explores one of Adam Smith’s obsessions: what it means to be happy.


He also discusses why that’s important to investors, and how we can seek to improve our own levels of happiness. The article further lists

James’s top ten suggestions for improving happiness.


In the article Who’s a Pretty Boy Then? Or Beauty Contests, Rationality and Greater Fools James Montier in February 2004 played a classic Keynes’ beauty contest with over 1000 professional investors.


He found that on average professional investors are using between one and two steps of strategic thinking in forming their expectations. He also found that many investors suffer the curse of knowledge and end up either picking zero or severely underestimating the irrationality of other players.


These results speak directly to the ability of investors to exit the market before the mass exodus. He found, unsurprisingly, that only a very small minority shows the required level of strategic thinking to beat the gun.


In this 76 page presentation Insights into irrational minds and market Applied Behavioural Finance: Insights into irrational minds and market James Montier gave in 2004 he in great detail described the behavioural biases investors are prone to. Its a great summary of a lot of his previous work in a presentation format, summarised in bullet points and graphs.


2003


This November 2003 issue of welling@weeden James Montier offers a reality and earnings checks.


In this January 2003 research paper Running with the Devil: The Advent of A Cynical Bubble James Montier explores the nature and underlying psychology of four different kinds of bubbles. To assess which comes closest to describing the current market.


To us, the current market environment is largely a greater fool market. Because such markets lack fundamental support, they are liable to precipitous declines.


2002


In Darwin’s Mind: The Evolutionary Foundations of Heuristics and Biases James Montier in December 2002 writes that a catalogue of biases that cognitive psychologists have built up over the last three decades seem to have stem from one of three roots – self-deception, heuristic simplification (including affect), and social interaction.


In this paper James explores the evolutionary basis of each of these roots. The simple truth is that we aren’t adapted to face the world as it is today. We evolved in a very different environment, and it is that ancestral evolutionary environment that governs the way in which we think and feel.


In 22 November 2002 James Montier wrote in Part man, part monkey that leaving the trees could have been our first mistake. Our minds are suited for solving problems related to our survival, rather than being optimised for investment decisions. We all make mistakes when we make decisions. The list below gives a top ten list for avoiding the most common investment mental pitfalls.



  1. You know less than you think you do

  2. Be less certain in your views, aim for timid forecasts and bold choices

  3. Don’t get hung up on one technique, tool, approach or view flexibility and pragmatism are the order of the day

  4. Listen to those who don’t agree with you

  5. You didn’t know it all along, you just think you did

  6. Forget relative valuation, forget market price, work out what the stock is worth (use reverse DCFs)

  7. Don’t take information at face value, think carefully about how it was presented to you

  8. Don’t confuse good firms with good investments, or good earnings growth with good returns

  9. Vivid, easy to recall events are less likely than you think they are, subtle causes are underestimated

  10. Sell your losers and ride your winners


>



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There has never been a better time to pay off your credit card debt. Credit card interest rates are skyrocketing with the impending recession. Recessions mean job loss, and the credit card issuing banks fear upcoming loss of payments. Not only are credit card interest rates getting higher, but in the event you lose your job, you don't want to be stuck with more credit card bills than you need.

Consider that if you have a $2,000 balance, adding nothing new to the card and paying minimum monthly payments of 3% at a 20% interest rate, you're looking at 183 payments, over 15 years, totaling $2,241! Wouldn't that $241 be more useful elsewhere?

According to this article on MSN Money Central:

23.8% of American households have no credit cards at all -- no bank cards, no retail cards, nothing.
Another 31.2% of the households the Fed surveyed paid off their most recent credit card bills in full.
So together, the households that owed nothing on credit cards equaled 55% of the total.

Of the households that did carry a balance, the median amount owed was $1,900.

Only 29% of households owe $1,000 or more on their cards.
21% owe $2,000 or more.
6% owe $8,000 or more.
4% owe $10,500 or more.
1% owe $21,400 or more.

Getting rid of credit card debt takes determination and willpower. It's easy to pay the minimum payments for years on end, but it's not the smartest thing to do.

Here's how to get rid of that lingering credit card debt.

Step 1: Create a budget. It's not as terrible as it sounds. Be prepared to be shocked at how much you spend. Get your credit card and bank statements together and look at how much you're spending, and on what. $5 here and $10 there really adds up. Create a budget with the realization that the money coming in should always exceed the money going out. If the outgoing money is more than the incoming money, you've got serious troubles. Determine a reasonable amount to spend monthly for food, gas, rent/mortgage, utilities, toiletries, rare and cheap entertainment, etc. If you're finding this too difficult on your own, you can always pay or find a charity personal finance manager to help you.

TIP: Eliminate entertainment expenses and frivolous purchases. Did you have to see that movie in the theatre last week? Did you really need that new lampshade? Shopping for nonessentials and going out should be the smallest portion of your budget.

TIP: If you're trying to "keep up with the Jonses", stop. Examine your priorities and determine if you'd rather be able to support yourself financially or buy that latest gadget or decorative item. If the answer is "buy", go ahead and give up the idea of financial freedom.

Step 2: Perform plastic surgery. Not the expensive kind, but the cheap kind. Take a pair of scissors and hack up those cards you really want to be rid of. If you can't bring yourself to do that just yet, hide them somewhere at home so you can't use them at stores for impulse purchases. You may need to have a trusted friend or relative hold on to them for you for accountability, so that if you want to "borrow" them you'd better have a good excuse.

Also, stop using your debit card. Use cash from the ATM instead for things like gas, food and your allotted spending budget. Consumers are much more likely to spend more when it's on "plastic", because psychologically it doesn't pack as big of a punch. Choose between throwing away a $20 bill and a credit card. You'd keep the twenty. You'll get the reality check at the grocery store, when handing over $4 in cash for a 12-pack of individually canned soft drinks versus $1 for a 2-liter of the same product.

Step 3: Make your debt payment plan. Sit down with your credit card statements and figure out how much you have on each credit card and what the interest rate is. Start with the card with the highest rate. From your budget, you can determine how much you have each month to spend on debt repayment. Pay the minimum monthly payment on the other cards and put as much money as you can towards the card with the highest interest rate. When it's completely paid down, take that money and apply it toward the second-highest card, and so on, until all the balances are gone. If you can genuinely make a budget and stick to it, you can determine ahead of time when you'll be debt-free.

If you have a credit card with a small balance that isn't your highest-rate card, go ahead and pay it off first. Then you'll know the exhilaration of not owing money, which will give you incentive for the bigger ones. Just take care not to create a new balance!

TIP: If you're having a hard time paying in big chunks, pay weekly. Your credit card company will accept money any time you want to send it. Instead of paying $100 a month, try $25 a week. That will also save you a little in credit interest costs.

TIP: Live well under your means. Ideally, you should be able to save and invest 1/3 of your income if you want to. Are you able to do this now? Use an online retirement calculator to determine how much you should be saving in order to be able to retire.

Step 4: Open your credit card bills and laugh at the zero balance. Now what are you going to do with all this money? Buy yourself a little prize, (using cash!), and then it's time to save and invest.

Once you've become financially responsible and can really stick to your budget, use your credit cards for budgeted items and pay them back monthly in full. Not using credit cards at all can damper your credit score. However, take care not to run the credit cards up again! You want to be debt free and stay that way.

Here's another helpful tip: Type or write this affirmation on some index cards or pieces of paper and tuck them in your checkbook, pocketbook, or wallet: "I always pay my credit card bills in full and on time!" Seeing that here and there will implant the subliminal message that you do not have to overspend. It's also helpful to write meaningful positive notes such as "I am debt free!" or "I am a wise spender!" and tape them on your credit cards, debit cards and checkbooks. That will earn you some strange looks and smiles from store clerks, but it will be a consistent friendly reminder to yourself that you are free of credit card debt - and you're going to stay that way!

Source:
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/creditcardsmarts/P150744.asp





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Friday, July 16, 2010

managing your personal finances

As you’ll read tomorrow (or Monday), I’ve entered a new phase in my life. After years of hard work and long hours building this blog (time that I’ve enjoyed), I’ve been shifting things around so that I have more free time. As a result, I’m going to have more time to devote to creating quality blog posts, instead of rushing around at the last minute looking for something to write about.


Because of this, it’s time yet again to take requests. I do this about once a year, and it’s a great way to get a feel for what GRS readers are interested in. I’d be grateful if you’d take the time to leave a comment below with topic suggestions or article requests. It doesn’t matter if we’ve covered the subject in the past. If you’d like me (or one of the other GRS staff) to write about it, let me know.


Have there been too many articles about credit cards? Too few articles about credit cards? Would you like to know more about individual savings accounts? Do you like the articles about the psychology of spending? Would it be helpful to have somebody come in to explain insurance concepts in plain English? Should I try to persuade my wife to share more of her recipes now and then? Let me know what you’d like to read about!


While you’re all providing feedback about the site, here are a few recent articles of note:


Over at The Simple Dollar, Trent and his readers had a thoughtful discussion about the obligations of wealth. “I think there is some inherent distrust of the rich in the mainstream of American society,” Trent writes as he describes how a wealthy person can keep from alienating his friends. There’s so much to say about this topic; I’m tempted to write an entire article about it.


GRS reader Steven writes a blog called Hundred Goals, which is about achieving your goals while managing your finances. After Sierra’s post this morning about travel, he dropped me a line to let me know that he has a recent article about how to have a great vacation.


Speaking of vacation, my pal Jason over at No Credit Needed spent time compiling day-use fees and free days for state parks across the United States. Handy page to bookmark!


And here’s more travel! At The Art of Non-Conformity, my good friend Chris Guillebeau has posted a beginner’s guide to travel hacking. I’ve been asking him to share this info for a long time; now I’ve got to take responsibility to use the knowledge he’s shared.


Finally, I’ve been giving a lot of interviews lately. I’m much more comfortable with these than I used to be. (They used to scare me to death!) Some examples:



  • Colleen from The Frisky interviewed me about how to save money even when you’re living paycheck to paycheck. This is a tough quandary, something I’m asked about a lot.


  • In an interview with BeFrugal, I discuss frugality, happiness, and conscious spending. (Note: “the ballot” should be “the balance” — I must have mumbled.)


  • Jeff Rose at Good Financial Cents also interviewed me. This interview is very much about the process of writing a book, which may or may not interest you.


  • I also spoke with Beverly Harzog from Card Ratings. We chatted about credit cards, of course, but also about other aspects of personal finance.


  • Finally, USA Weekend has a short piece on how to give your 401(k) a midyear check, for which author Richard Eisenberg interviewed me back in May. This is a perfect example of how much work goes into even a small newspaper article. Eisenberg spent 20-30 minutes on the phone with me, and I’m sure he did the same with the other folks he quotes. Plus, I’ll bet he spent a lot of time writing. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 4-6 hours in this small piece.


Okay, one last thing before I go. Tim pointed me to a two-year-old New York Times series about the debt trap, which includes an interactive infographic showing average household debt loads over the past century.


That’s enough links for today. Please do leave a comment with topic requests or other feedback. Meanwhile, it’s time for me to go do some yardwork…









As you’ll read tomorrow (or Monday), I’ve entered a new phase in my life. After years of hard work and long hours building this blog (time that I’ve enjoyed), I’ve been shifting things around so that I have more free time. As a result, I’m going to have more time to devote to creating quality blog posts, instead of rushing around at the last minute looking for something to write about.


Because of this, it’s time yet again to take requests. I do this about once a year, and it’s a great way to get a feel for what GRS readers are interested in. I’d be grateful if you’d take the time to leave a comment below with topic suggestions or article requests. It doesn’t matter if we’ve covered the subject in the past. If you’d like me (or one of the other GRS staff) to write about it, let me know.


Have there been too many articles about credit cards? Too few articles about credit cards? Would you like to know more about individual savings accounts? Do you like the articles about the psychology of spending? Would it be helpful to have somebody come in to explain insurance concepts in plain English? Should I try to persuade my wife to share more of her recipes now and then? Let me know what you’d like to read about!


While you’re all providing feedback about the site, here are a few recent articles of note:


Over at The Simple Dollar, Trent and his readers had a thoughtful discussion about the obligations of wealth. “I think there is some inherent distrust of the rich in the mainstream of American society,” Trent writes as he describes how a wealthy person can keep from alienating his friends. There’s so much to say about this topic; I’m tempted to write an entire article about it.


GRS reader Steven writes a blog called Hundred Goals, which is about achieving your goals while managing your finances. After Sierra’s post this morning about travel, he dropped me a line to let me know that he has a recent article about how to have a great vacation.


Speaking of vacation, my pal Jason over at No Credit Needed spent time compiling day-use fees and free days for state parks across the United States. Handy page to bookmark!


And here’s more travel! At The Art of Non-Conformity, my good friend Chris Guillebeau has posted a beginner’s guide to travel hacking. I’ve been asking him to share this info for a long time; now I’ve got to take responsibility to use the knowledge he’s shared.


Finally, I’ve been giving a lot of interviews lately. I’m much more comfortable with these than I used to be. (They used to scare me to death!) Some examples:



  • Colleen from The Frisky interviewed me about how to save money even when you’re living paycheck to paycheck. This is a tough quandary, something I’m asked about a lot.


  • In an interview with BeFrugal, I discuss frugality, happiness, and conscious spending. (Note: “the ballot” should be “the balance” — I must have mumbled.)


  • Jeff Rose at Good Financial Cents also interviewed me. This interview is very much about the process of writing a book, which may or may not interest you.


  • I also spoke with Beverly Harzog from Card Ratings. We chatted about credit cards, of course, but also about other aspects of personal finance.


  • Finally, USA Weekend has a short piece on how to give your 401(k) a midyear check, for which author Richard Eisenberg interviewed me back in May. This is a perfect example of how much work goes into even a small newspaper article. Eisenberg spent 20-30 minutes on the phone with me, and I’m sure he did the same with the other folks he quotes. Plus, I’ll bet he spent a lot of time writing. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 4-6 hours in this small piece.


Okay, one last thing before I go. Tim pointed me to a two-year-old New York Times series about the debt trap, which includes an interactive infographic showing average household debt loads over the past century.


That’s enough links for today. Please do leave a comment with topic requests or other feedback. Meanwhile, it’s time for me to go do some yardwork…










mike fuljenz mike fuljenz mike fuljenz mike fuljenz mike fuljenz mike fuljenz

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Thursday, July 15, 2010

foreclosure law

In the polarization of politics, parsing words of politicians has become a fine art form by opponents to score points as if the public has a mental scoreboard in their heads.


I’m drawing from memory here as most voters would on criticism tossed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate

Banking chairman Chris Dodd.


After passage of the health reform legislation, Pelosi said we won’t know what’s in the law until it plays out in real time.


After the joint conference agreement on the pending financial reform package, Dodd said he hoped the new regulations would work.


That’s how I understood what they were trying to say.


The Republican attack machine framed it differently. They suggested Pelosi didn’t bother to read the health legislation. And Dodd was dabbling in some unproven experiment for heavy-handed governmental interference of the capitalist system.


Both pieces of legislation are 1,500 to more than 2,000 pages thick. Not in a million years am I so altruistic that I believe all 535 House and Senate members read every word of both legislative proposals.


Nor do I believe every subsection of each law will work as intended.


Laws are not set in concrete. They can be amended. They can be improved to meet the test of pragmatism. They can be dropped as failures. Awkwardly, it takes Congressional action to do that.


During the 1992 presidential campaign, the one proposal Ross Perot advocated I subscribed to was that each law passed by Congress have a two to five-year sunset clause to determine if it was working.


Now that’s a reasonable concept rather than the Republican battle cry to repeal the health reform law because they don’t like the one section, of hundreds, that mandates purchase of insurance coverage. Some opponents, such as former Alaska half-Gov. Sarah Palin, I presume would not settle for less than a repeal of the entire legislative act.


As for the financial reform legislation, no one other than a cheer-leading President Obama, who does not have a vote, is so bold as to predict passage, especially in the Senate.


What Dodd maybe was referring to as a “hope,” is based on what a battalion of lawyers will write as specific regulatory rules applying to each subsection of the massive legislation overhauling our financial industry how it conducts business.


How that plays out is anyone’s guess. Here are two analysis that may help in determining the prospective winners and losers.


What I object to is that the financial reform package exempted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which were instrumental in creating the housing market collapse.


The Congressional Budget Office says Fannie and Freddie will end up costing taxpayers more money than the historic bailout of the financial industry.


Congress voted in 2008 to effectively place the two mortgage giants in a federal receivership by taking over 80% of its paper holdings.


So far the tab stands at $145.9 billion, and it grows with every foreclosure of a three-bedroom home with a two-car garage. The CBO predicts that the final bill could reach $389 billion.


Rather than being in the lending business, Fannie and Freddie are just as active in the foreclosure end of it.


Every 90 seconds in the first quarter of this year the two giants foreclosed on a home they financed and guaranteed to pay back investors.


By the end of March they owned 163,828 foreclosed homes, about the same number of total households in Seattle.


“Our business is the American dream of home ownership,” Fannie Mae declared in its mission statement, and in 2001 the company set a target of helping to create six million new homeowners by 2014. The New York Times, reporting from Casa Grande, about an hour’s drive from Phoenix:


Fannie and Freddie increased American home ownership over the last half-century by persuading investors to provide money for mortgage loans. The sales pitch amounted to a money-back guarantee: If borrowers defaulted, the companies promised to repay the investors.

Rather than actually making loans, the two companies — Fannie older and larger, Freddie created to provide competition — bought loans from banks and other originators, providing money for more lending and helping to hold down interest rates.


They paid no heed to predator lenders requiring no money down, balloon payments nor financial statements

from new home buyers’ ability to pay.


The result is Fannie and Freddie today are the nation’s largest landlords.


The two companies together accounted for 17% of real estate sales in Arizona during the first four months of the year, almost three times their share of the market during the same period last year, according to an analysis by MDA DataQuick.


It costs the government about $10,000 to sell each foreclosed house and recoup less than 60% of what the homeowner failed to pay after a resale at deflated market values than the original mortgage purchase price.


Some sales are to investors who “flip” the houses for quick profits after the government repaired interior damage and maintained its yards.


As to the maintenance costs, just the cost of contracting mowing an empty foreclosed property costs $80 per month. The Times:


That’s a monthly grass bill of more than $10 million.

All told, the companies spent more than $1 billion on upkeep last year.


To ensure more new homeowners buy the foreclosures, Fannie and Freddie agreed to sell to nonprofits using taxpayer grants from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program.


Chicanos por la Causa, which won $137 million under the program in partnership with nonprofits in eight other states, plans to buy more than 200 homes in Phoenix in the next two years. It plans to renovate them to sell to local families.


Another gimmick:


Fannie Mae last summer announced that it would give people seeking homes a “first look” by not accepting offers from investors in the first 15 days that a property is on the market. It also offers to help buyers with closing costs, and prohibits buyers from reselling properties at a profit for 90 days, to discourage speculation. Fannie Mae said that 68.4% of buyers this year had certified that they would use the house as a primary residence.


Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is our problem because Congress bought them for us without our asking.


Cross posted on

I’m not quite certain how to calibrate journalism American Banker style, but I found this article, “Challenges to Foreclosure Docs Reach a Fever Pitch,” (sadly, subscription only, e-mailed by Chris Whalen), to be both interesting and more than a tad disingenuous.


The spin starts with the headline, it’s a doozy. The “challenge to foreclosure documents” message persists throughout the article, and it’s perilously close to a misrepresentation:


Because the notes were often sold and resold during the boom years, many financial companies lost track of the documents. Now, legal officials are accusing companies of forging the documents needed to reclaim the properties.


On Monday, the Florida Attorney General’s Office said it was investigating the use of “bogus assignment” documents by Lender Processing Services Inc. and its former parent, Fidelity National Financial Inc. And last week a federal judge in Florida ordered a hearing to determine whether M&T Bank Corp. should be charged with fraud after it changed the assignment of a mortgage note for one borrower three separate times…


In many cases, [plaintiff attorney] Kowalski said, it has become impossible to establish when a mortgage was sold, and to whom, so the servicers are trying to recreate the paperwork, right down to the stamps that financial companies use to verify when a note has changed hands…


In a notice on its website, the Florida attorney general said it is examining whether Docx, an Alpharetta, Ga., unit of Lender Processing Services, forged documents so foreclosures could be processed more quickly.


“These documents are used in court cases as ‘real’ documents of assignment and presented to the court as so, when it actually appears that they are fabricated in order to meet the demands of the institution that does not, in fact, have the necessary documentation to foreclose according to law,” the notice said..


Yves here. Let’s parse the two messages:


1. Note how the problem is presented as one of “documentation”, implying it is not substantive.


2. Because everyone knows mortgages were sold a lot, (which is clearly mentioned in the piece) the idea that some somehow went missing (or as the piece suggests, the “documentation” is missing even though the parties are presented as if they know who really owns the mortgage) is presented as something routine and not very alarming.


OK, let’s dig a little deeper. Even though the media refers to “mortgages”, under the law there are two pieces: the note, which is the indebtedness, and the mortgage (in some states, a “deed of trust”), which is the lien against the property. In 45 of 50 states, the mortgage follows the note (it is an “accessory”) and has no independent existence (as in you can’t enforce the mortgage if you don’t hold the note. You need to have both the note and the mortgage. This is a bit approximate, but will do for this discussion).


Now, the note is a bearer instrument if it is endorsed in blank (as in signed by current owner but not specifically made payable to the next owner, which was common for notes that were sold). It isn’t some damned “documentation”. Remember the days of bonds, when you had the real security, or stock certificates? This is paper with a hard monetary value, the face amount of the note (as long as it’s current, anyhow).


So now go back and look at that little extract. This “oh business was so busy we mislaid a lot of paper” isn’t some mere filing error. It’s like saying you left an envelopes full of cash in the subway on a regular basis. In the late 1960s back office crisis on Wall Street, when the volume of stock trading overwhelmed delivery and settlement infrastructure, a LOT of firms went out of business, in the midst of a bull market.


OK, now the second item with the article finesses is the sale of mortgages versus the role of the servicer. For the overwhelming majority of first mortgages, and I believe about 50% of second mortgages and HELOCs, the servicer is working for a trust that holds the notes pursuant to a securitization.


The standard documentation for a RMBS calls for the trust to gave a certification at closing that it has all the notes and it has to recertify that it has all the assets at two additional future dates, usually 90 days out and a full year after closing.


So this “notes were flyin’ around, yeah we lost track” is presumably impossible if we are discussing securitizations. Or put it another way: it means the fraud here is much more extensive than servicers making up documents ex post facto. It means the fraud extended back into how the securitization took place (as in what investors were told v. what actually happened).


And before you say these reports are exaggerated, my limited sample and my discussions with mortgage professional (not merely plaitiff’s attorneys but mortgage industry lifers) suggests the reverse.


But what about the second claim in the headline, that this activity has reached a “fever pitch”? Wellie, that’s a distortion too, perhaps to energize those who would be enraged by visions of deadbeat borrowers staying in houses due to fancy legal footwork. Trust me, there are FAR more overextended borrowers living in “free” housing due to banks slowing up the foreclosure process than due to legal battles.


First, the story is ONLY about Florida, despite the hyperventilating tone. And Florida is way ahead of other jurisdictions. There is a group of lawyers that are sharing G2 on these cases, and there are also a fair number of sympathetic judges. Note some states (Minnesota in particular) have both extremely pro bank laws and a business friendly bar. So it’s misleading to make sweeping generalizations; you need to get a bit more granular, which this article fails to do.


Second, the “fever pitch” headline also conveys the impression that this is an epidemic, ergo, these cases are widespread. While it is hard to be certain (this activity is by nature fragmented), at this point, that looks to be quite an exaggeration. The vast majority of borrowers, when the foreclosure process moves forward, don’t fight. They lack the energy and the resources. And when the borrower prevails, the case is typically dismissed “without prejudice”, meaning if the servicer and trustee get their act together, they can come back to court and try again.


Most of the battles against foreclosure appear to fall into one of two categories:


1. The borrower can afford the mortgage, but has fallen behind due to what he thinks is a servicing snafu. I can give you the long form, but the way servicers charge extra fees is in violation of Federal law and is designed to put the borrower on a treadmill of escalating fees. And they do not typically inform the borrower that fees have compounded until 6 or more months into the mess, and by that time, the arrearage can be $2000 or more. The borrower is unable to fix the servicing error, the fees continue to escalate, and the house goes into foreclosure.


2. The borrower has filed for a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, but the trustee is fighting the bankruptcy stay and trying to seize the house.


So why this alarmist American Banker article? Even if the numbers of successfully contested foreclosures are not (yet) large, the precedents being set are very detrimental to the foreclosure mills, the servicers, and the trustees. Moreover, the costs of fighting these cases can quickly exceed the value of the mortgage. So it would not take much of an increase in this trend to wreak havoc with servicer economics, and ultimately, the losses on the trust, particularly on prime mortgages, where the loss cushions were considerably smaller than on subprime.


I suspect the real reason for alarm isn’t the “fever pitch,” meaning the current level of activity. It’s that a state attorney general is throwing his weight against the servicers, and what he is uncovering is every bit as bad as what the critics have been saying for some time. That may indeed kick up anti-foreclosure efforts in states with open-minded judges to a completely new level.




diastolic


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