Archives for October, 2009
31
Oct
Posted in holidays, humor by Roger, the Amateur Financier |
By the time you read this, Halloween will have come and gone. Hopefully, everyone had a great holiday, with plenty of candy, creative costumes, and scares. (The good kind of scares, not ones that involve running out of candy as a gang of miniature hoodlums comes knocking on your door.)
There is something about Halloween that seems to bring out the kid in everyone. Or at least, the childlike thrill of becoming someone, being able to step outside yourself and take on a new persona, act and react in ways that you normally couldn’t. I don’t know what it is exactly; my best guess is that we all, regardless of how much we love our lives, occasionally want to see how the other half lives. If the other half happens to be a vampire who’s ready to drain the blood of innocent maidens or handsome rakes, well, all the better then.
Psychologically, the idea of wish-fulfillment and unconscious desires made into a reality is wonderfully inspiring. Add in the types of costumes chosen (sexy and seductive roles for the women, powerful predators for the men, figures of authority and control for the children) and the implications get even more profound. Everyone can seize whatever is lacking in their own life and become something more. That’s it; the true purpose of Halloween is nothing more than an id-releasing, ego-stroking, Freudian fantasy come to life!
Or maybe it’s all about the candy.
Candy: It's what's for dinner (for the next two weeks...)
Yup, definitely about the candy. Happy Halloween!
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29
Oct
Posted in Weekly Thoughts by Roger, the Amateur Financier |
It’s that time of year for all good (and wicked) little boys and girls to put on their costumes, go gallivanting around town, and gather up candy from the townspeople. Yes, that’s right, it’s nearly time once again for Halloween. It’s one of my favorite holidays (and not just because my birthday falls a mere four day before); how many other days do you get the opportunity to dress up and pretend to be other people, regardless of whether you are eight or eighty? Other holidays might offer more in the way of presents or religious and spiritual significance, but for sheer possibility of childish glee, it’s hard to beat Halloween.
I’m not sure how things are done in all the other states, but here in Pennsylvania, we’ve developed the habit of not actually Trick or Treating on Halloween itself. Instead, each community has a particular day of the week, and during the week before Halloween, that day of the week is when kids go out to get candy. Wednesday is when my community held Trick or Treat, while it was on Thursday for my fiancee’s town. It’s kind of good, in that you don’t have to worry about what day of the week Halloween falls, but it causes some problems when children from other communities take advantage of the different Trick or Treat dates and go to different communities to get candy. (Yes, it is a problem we hear a lot about in October, although how bad situation has gotten is up for debate.)
Now, for your Halloween pleasure, enjoy a few of the best posts from this past week. No Halloween-themed posts yet (that’s for next week, I hope), but still a great deal of good information was created last week:
Dammed Lies, Statistics, and the Great Recession – As we recover from the ‘Great Recession’, there’s going to be lots of discussion of just who got hurt the most in the downturn. Frank Curmudgeon covers one report claiming that during this downturn, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. While it’s a good turn of phrase (and a commonly encountered cliche, to boot), as Frank points out, it’s too early to make such a determination from official government reports, which tend to be rather slow in coming. We’ll have to wait a while yet before we can determine just what the fall out from this downturn really was.
Traditional and Roth IRA Contribution Limits for 2010 – You’ll probably hear much about this from the financial media soon, but My Life ROI has gone through the IRS’s Publication 590 to discover the contribution limits next year. I’ll admit I don’t know all the details of the contribution limits for 2009, so I can’t say for certain, but it looks like the limits are the same for next year. That means, another $5000 I get to add to my Roth!
Put a Stop to Junk Mail – Stephanie of Poorer Than You continues on her quest to help everyone protect their identity, this time focusing on how you can stop getting junk mail (and having your personal data coming into your mailbox every day). Besides being a good way to help protect your identity, anything that causes you to get less junk mail is always a plus in my book. Being able to do both at the same time is, as the Mastercard commercials would say, priceless.
92 Quotes about Debt – Apparently, Baker of Man vs. Debt and I share something beyond merely both writing a PF blog: we are both big into quotations. Here are 92 quotations (my speech coach in college would be all over me if I referred to them as ‘quotes’) from proverbs, historic figures, and the ever verbose ‘Unknown’ to help shed some light on this thing called debt. Enjoy reading through them as much as I have.
10 Ways to Speed Up Your Student Loan Repayment – While getting a college education can be very useful to your success in life (some people would even argue that it is downright essential), it comes with a price: student loan debt. Studenomics has some advice on how we, the indebted college grads, can reduce our student debt burden. I’d just offer one more piece of advice: whatever you do, do it quickly; as with any type of debt, the longer you wait, the more interest can build up, snowballing into ever greater debt. Try to chop some extra off in the beginning so you get a running start at repayment.
10 Free Online Budgeting Applications - Last week was a big week for lists, apparently; Lazy Man and Money is the third entry in this edition of the Weekly Thoughts (which is itself a list…) to make a blog entry in the form of a list. In this case, we get several budgeting applications you can find online provided for our future financial growth. Many of them I’ve heard mentioned before, (and even use myself), but a few, like Buxfer and Thrive were new to me, and might just be what you are looking for in a budgeting system.
Forbes Forgot a Key Ingredient to Becoming a Billionaire – Apparently, even Forbes has a sense of humor; they wrote a humorous take on what is needed to become a billionaire, listing five characteristics you need. Luckily for us, the Financial Samurai caught one they missed: inheriting the money from your parents. Certainly seems easier than, you know, working, saving, and investing.
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28
Oct
Posted in Small Business 101 by Roger, the Amateur Financier |
(Welcome, my friends to another edition of Investing…er, Small Business 101. Yes, in the interest of spreading my wings, broadening my horizons, and generally branching out, I’m going to switch gears a bit with my Investing 101 series and focus on different issues related to starting and running a small business. It’s a topic that has been tickling my fancy lately; after all, this blog could be considered as its own type of small business, so I do have a little experience in the field. So, join me as I attempt to explore other small business concepts and opportunities.)
Q: What is a franchise?
A: A franchise is a business structure where a person or (more often) a large corporation (such as, to use the most commonly encountered example, McDonald’s) allows others to use their products and trademarks.. The franchiser grants the rights to their intellectual property in exchange for the regular payment of a franchise fee and possibly royalties.
Q: Why bother with a franchise? Why can’t I open my own business and be done with it?
A: You certainly could open your own business; nobody would try to stop you. But there are some advantages of franchises, particularly from a customer’s point of view. Let’s say you’re driving in an area you’ve never been before, when you need to stop for lunch. There are two different restaurants available: Joe’s Burgers ‘N’ Fries and McDonald’s. Chances are, the McDonald’s will have roughly the same quality and selection of food as every other McDonald’s; Joe’s is a complete unknown, however. It might have the best food in the area, or it might give you food poisoning; there are few ways to know ahead of time. Given this unpredictability, most customers will opt for the known quality, even if it means settling for less than stellar service.
One of the most famous signs in all the world, and it could be yours
Q: So, name recognition is a big plus with a franchise; what are some others?
A: There are other advantages of franchises, for the franchisee and the franchiser. The franchisee gets a support network, help setting up and running their business, and can rely on a wide network of support and advertising to help boost their business. The franchiser gets financial compensation for their intellectual property, and the chance to expand their network of affiliated businesses without having to build them up personally.
Q: Seems pretty good all around. Are there any disadvantages of a franchise relationship?
A: As with anything, with the pros must come the cons. For the franchiser, this means losing some control over what happens to the businesses baring their company’s name. The more the franchisees are allowed to personalize or otherwise tailor the business model to their particular needs and desires, the less influence the franchiser will have over what happens to their brand name. In some cases, legal or other problems arising at one franchisee can taint the entire franchise, hurting the franchiser even if most of the franchisees followed all the rules and behaved in an outstanding manner.
There are problems for the franchisee, as well. The money paid to the franchiser cut into the bottom line of the company, meaning greater profits must be generated in order to get started with a franchise and simply stay afloat. As with the franchiser, there’s also the issue of control; being a franchise rather than an independent company means following certain rules and protocols set out by the franchiser to protect its brand. This means less ability to control and customize your own company according to your wishes. Finally, there are no guarantees; even a top flight franchise, with excellent support and promotion networks, can still fail for any number reasons, both in the franchisee’s control and outside of it.
Q: Alright, so if I’m still considering a franchise, where can I go to get more information?
A: If you have your heart set on a particular franchise, you can usually find information about being a franchisee through their website or other promotional materials. If you are still exploring the options, there are any number of sources online, such as Franchise.com and Entrepreneur.com, which specialize in franchises and can provide you with the information and help that you need to get started.
That’s about it for Franchise 101; hopefully, you’ve learned a bit more about franchises and how you can get started in the franchise game. Enjoy the franchise-owning goodness, if that’s where your interests lay.
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27
Oct
Posted in milestones, Personal by Roger, the Amateur Financier |
Well, well, well, it’s that time of year again. Yes, I am another year older, and presumably, another year wiser. Certainly, I’ve been learning a lot about personal finance, investing, and money management over this past year. One advantage of writing a blog is that you tend to do lots of research into your subject matter, and as a result, I’ve had the opportunity to read more about personal finance in the past year than I did in my previous twenty-six (which makes me 27 now, in case you were wondering).
Of course, aging does have problems of its own. One of my biggest problems with birthdays as I’ve been getting older is that I no longer know what presents I should request. There isn’t too much I want, and frankly, what I do want, I can easily afford on my own. I didn’t have any good suggestions for possible presents from my family, although it would be nice to go out to dinner. (It’s official; I’m the father in an old sitcom, a fate I always figured would happen eventually.) Admittedly, this isn’t exactly a horrifyingly devastating problem, but that’s all I’ve really been worrying about this birthday.
So, in lieu of expensive presents or doodads I’ll play with for a little bit and then forget, all I really want for my birthday is to learn a bit more about my fellow bloggers. Please feel free to leave a comment listing your birthday, so I can add it to this post and have a reminder for when it rolls around next year. Hopefully, all your birthdays in the upcoming year will be as happy as mine (and less busy; I had to work last night and I’m working again tonight, even coming in early for a monthly meeting). Have a great October 27th, everyone!
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