Meta Post : 5 great comments

Posted by Tad Johnson - May 5th, 2008 at 20:05

I’ve been impressed by the quality of comments lately. In case you missed them, here are five comments and my response. 

1) In response to backing up your finances, Presh wrote :

“I would add one more suggestion for younger people: talk to your parents about their financial information and ask if they have all their financial information backed up. We don’t like to think about it, but we might need to help them in a medical or physical emergency”

This is a great point to add and an important consideration. Chances are, you have parents. Have you talked to them about their finances? It may be an uncomfortable conversation, but it’s important none the less. 

2) On the subject of real estate, and the falling suburb house prices, jrandom42 added this: 

 ”Notice it said MOST. Not happening in the Puget Sound area. Prices are still sky high. There are radio commercials for places in the “mid 700s” as if those were really bargains. Even an hour and a half away from Seattle, prices are still in the mid-300s.”

This is a really important point for anyone considering a real estate investment. The U.S. economy is continually shifting and picking the right area is crucial for any long term investment like a house. 30 years ago, Detroit seemed like a pretty great place. Today it’s a ghost town in some parts. Flint is even worse. Pick an area with a strong economy that is likely to remain strong throughout the coming energy shift.

3) Glen shared his personal experience with using cash : 

 ”I normally swipe my debit card for everything, only using cash for parking decks and restaurants that won’t take cards.

While I was in Europe earlier this year, however, I found that carrying Euros was far easier than hoping that a store would accept a card, and I was amazed at how much more conscious I was of what I was spending.

I’m normally a tightwad, so I rarely worry about going over my limit - with 150 Euros draped around my neck though, I could literally feel the impact of every three or four Euros spent (especially via coins).”

Going cash-only not only helps your everyday personal finances, it can really help while on vacation.

4) Quick hit–Eric suggested another credit card for gas rebates : 

 ”I’ll just add that the Discover Open Road Card includes 5% back on gas purchases as well as the above mentioned ‘Auto maintenance.’”

5)  Dan achieves the ultimate gas savings zen : 

 ”I think there is one obvious tip for saving money on gas … take fewer trips. I think our culture is too comfortable with this on-demand lifestyle. In the old days, people would keep a grocery list and then go shopping on the weekend to stock up for the week to come. Now we are constantly making trips to the super market or over to pick this up or run that errand. I think we could all save some gas and some stress if we slowed down, planned, made lists, and stocked up.”

This is a great point that can be said often enough. We need to rethink our relationship with automobiles. If nothing else, $4 gas should teach us that we don’t need to drive for every errand or every outing. Most of the other 6 billion of our neighbors on Earth manage to live without cars. . . why can’t we?

 

Do this today : back up your financial data

Posted by Tad Johnson - Apr 30th, 2008 at 20:04

You have strong passwords on all your financial accounts. (Right?)

You have an emergency cash account that you could access in an emergency. (Right?)

You have car insurance and/or renter’s insurance. (Right?)

But, do you have copies of your important financial data? Sure you can access everything online, but it’s a whole lot easier to consolidate everything in one place. Take ten minutes out of your day tomorrow and do this:

  • Make scans of all the cards in your wallet (front and back). Store it as a .pdf or .jpg somewhere secure (like in your gmail account).
  • Write down all your important contacts & account numbers for your banking/investment accounts. Store it securely online.
  • Get $100 from the ATM and hide it somewhere in your house (hey, you never know).

With these three simple steps, you’re preparing for the worst possible situation. Hopefully, you’ll never have to access your “backups” but if you ever do, you’ll thank yourself big time.

Trouble at Yodlee? [updated]

Posted by Tad Johnson - Apr 20th, 2008 at 18:04

yodlee.JPGI’ve previously spoken highly of Yodlee’s Moneycenter service. It’s really great and works well. . . until it doesn’t. For reasons as of yet unknown, the Yodlee site has been down since Friday. I’m pretty certain that it’s really down and not some bizarre DNS wormhole (sorry, IT joke).

I work in the IT field, so I know how things can go wrong with computer systems. Even so, a 72 hour outage is pretty bad for any company who expects to be taken seriously. This also belies the trouble with trusting one site with all your financial accounts. (Though to be fair, I could just log in to my accounts individually. But really, who wants to do that?)

Let’s hope that by the time this gets published Yodlee has restored service and we can all go back to personal finance bliss.

[Update : As of 21:32 central time, the site is back online. Looks like they were just waiting to get called out by this pillar of financial blogdom]

5 tips for building a collaborative community

Posted by Tad Johnson - Apr 17th, 2008 at 15:04

I wrote the article below for an internal blog at work. Once I wrote it, I realized that it was pretty much applicable anywhere so I thought I’d try to get a little more press. I’m also posting it over at tadfad.com.

Collaboration is all the rage in Corporate America this year. With a globally dispersed workforce, much of this collaboration is taking place online. Web sites, wikis, blogs, forums, and even full collaboration suites are emerging on the scene.

Are you looking to tap into this collaborative energy? Want to form an online presence for your global team? Here are 5 tips that will help grow your collaborative community.

1. Get Personal. The web is often criticized for being too impersonal–but it need not be so. Most (all?) online collaboration tools have the ability to include small photos (sometimes called avatars) for users. Encourage everyone on the tool to add their own photo. We’re visual, personal creatures by nature so let’s make it personal! For example, there’s my photo. Doesn’t that feel more personal?

2. Respond. If you are trying to start a collaboration community online, you have the burden to check for updates frequently and respond as much as possible. This is especially critical during the first days/weeks as users are testing it out. If a colleague is going to take the time to pose a question or comment, you need to respond in kind. Yes, this is a time investment. Yes, it will pay off.

3. Reward/Recognize. Participating in collaboration communities is not a mandatory task. It’s not critical to our day-to-day jobs. Yet it has the potential to yield great results in improved efficiency and outcomes for businesses. The early adopters who are willing to stick their necks out and participate should be recognized and rewarded. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, and it can be done entirely within the online community, but some sort of recognition is key. As an example of free, easy recognition, Flickr.com (a photo sharing site) allows users to give each other virtual awards for outstanding photos.

4. Set some goals. Users will be encouraged to participate if they know why they’re participating. Set some goals for your collaborative community, making sure they’re time based, measurable, and significant. As an easy example, you could set the goal to reduce team emails by 20% through the use of an online collaboration community.

5. Show progress. Once you’ve set some goals above, track them and communicate progress. We all love trackers and metrics, so this should be second nature. Give your collaboration partners a sense of accomplishment by charting the groups successes (and/or failures).

Don’t be discouraged if your first attempt at collaboration is not wildly successful. As we all become more comfortable and aware of the opportunities of online communities we will work our way up the capability ladder. These tips will help you start that climb.

5 Tried and True Financial Fundamentals [via SavingsAdvice.com]

Posted by Tad Johnson - Mar 27th, 2008 at 22:03

Phoning this one in, folks. Click through for the full story.

http://www.savingadvice.com/blog/2008/03/23/102071_tried-and-true-financial-principles.html

Five Tried and True Financial Fundamentals - SavingAdvice.com Blog via kwout

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