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Monthly Archives: May 2007

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Solar Bucks

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I’d like to think that we DINKs are pretty astute observers of the world around us. One thing I’ve been noticing is that the wind of public opinion is shifting. Now it seems that most everyone in the U.S. is jumping on the green bandwagon. Corporations and politicians, Democrat and Republican alike are all openly discussing ways to better care for the environment.

One of these ways is solar power. Countries like Germany and Australia are already starting to explore ways to make solar powered electricity a reality for consumers. Some entrepreneurs seem to be exploring business models to turn a profit in this new growth industry. For example, organizations like Wal-Mart are getting into solar for the cost savings and government incentive packages that go along with it. This is not surprising as worldwide demand for solar power is currently outstripping the ability of some manufacturers to supply photovoltaic cells.

Okay, so where do you come into all of this? Well, if there is a boom in solar energy, that means there’s a buck to be made somewhere. To whit, there are at two least ways you could make some money in solar right now:

1) Invest in solar providers. Companies like Akeena Solar (AKNS.OB) are reporting that demand for solar power is increasing substantially in some markets. You might consider finding a good small cap stock that well positioned to take advantage of this rising trend. I wouldn’t invest in Akeena, but the industry might have some attractive picks.

2) Start a solar power plant. Photovoltaic cells have become increasing efficient and some are capable of converting 50% of the Sun’s energy into electricity. Many utility companies are now offering cash incentives for home or business owners to install solar panels on one’s roof or sun exposed surfaces (here)(here)(here). While hassling through the logistics of getting solar set up is sure to be a pain, it might be worth researching to see if the effort is worth the extra cash the solar energy will bring. After all, energy is a commodity like any other. Everyone needs it, and it’s worth real money!

We hope you enjoyed this posting. If any of you do decided to follow up on these suggestion, please email us! We would love to hear about your experiences!

Best,

James

Tips For Getting Started

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Hello All,

Since Miel and I are bloggers, we spend a lot of time thinking about personal finance. Sometimes we forget that not everyone focuses on wealth to the extent we do. For those of you that are just getting starting in personal finance, we wanted to offer some pointers. Everyone’s financial situation differs, but this advice is pretty rock-solid and should serve you regardless of your situation:

1) Dump your credit card debt.

If you’ve got any credit card debt, pay it off as soon as possible. There are a number of reasons why you should do this, but the main one is that the consumer credit lending industry has become is inherently exploitative. How the exploitation works has been better described elsewhere, so I won’t go into it here. Pay off your credit cards and switch to using a debit card.
Don’t argue, don’t equivocate, just do it.

2) Get Educated.

Personal finance is not a mysterious topic. You don’t have to be a genius, or even all that smart to be financially successful. But, educating yourself about how money works and how to best navigate among the options you have will serve you well. This does not need to be extensive, just pick up a basic book or two on personal finance. We recommend Personal Finance for Dummies 3rd edition. The author is Eric Tyson. Tyson makes complicated concepts appear clear, accessible and unambiguous.

I hope some of this helps. Making yourself financially fit can be challenging, but the long run rewards are really quite substantial.

Best,

James

Rethinking Loral Langemeier

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A few weeks back, I wrote a rather scathing review of Loral Langemeier‘s book, The Millionaire Maker. Since then, the book has been hanging around on my shelf while we decided what to do with it. A couple of days ago, I grabbed it and started leafing through it.

In retrospect, perhaps I’d been overly harsh in my evaluation of Langmeier. After re-reading some of her book I was motivated to take the following steps:

1) I opened a checking account for our blog. While we aren’t making a ton of cash, having a separate account will help us think critically about allocating funds to reinvest in our blog (e.g. by buying our domain name registry, getting paid links to high traffic sites, etc.). Langemeier is big on restructuring your personal financial picture to make yourself more efficient, so I followed suit.

2) I bought an additional $50.00 in savings bonds. Some of this $50 was from cash we had on-hand, but I raised another little bit by selling a Barnes and Noble giftcard on craigslist. Langemeier is big on taking action and even though the interest rate on EE bonds is awful right now, by buying the bonds at least we’re moving forward.

While neither of these actions follows Langemeier’s recommendations specifically, reading her book did help me get motivated to take action, and that’s valuable in and of itself.

Best,

James

The All Mighty Kilowatt

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I recently heard about an Irish company called Stoern which claims to have discovered a method of producing limitless, renewable clean energy. If these guys can get it together to produce free energy, that would be wonderful, but in the meantime the average Joe or Jane will still have to keep shelling out for their power bill.

In fact, we DINKs have been shelling out quite a bit for our power. Over the past few months we’ve paid about $728.82 to our local power company for electric (check out our bank statement to the right). Needless to say, Its put a bit of a strain on our budget so we’ve been discussing what we can do use less electricity. We’ve come up with four reasons that work for us.

1) Shut off the Power to Your Appliances: Things like your cell phone charger, computer, printer and stereo can draw power even when they are shut off. We’ve got a fair amount of these devices, so we’ve been unplugging their power strips to kill the drain on our electric bill.

2) Shop Around: If you go to your local utility commission they should have information about utilities which have the best rates for power in your area. In Washington, the relevant agency is the Public Services Commission, but there should be a local government body which can provide you information about current prices for electricity. Our provider is currently the cheapest, but that’s no reason why you shouldn’t shop around.

3) Turn off the Lights: Everyone says this, but it matters. If you aren’t using them, turn off the lights. We’re trying to make more of an effort to be sure our lights are off, even when we pop out of the house for groceries.

4) Adjust the Temperature on Your Refrigerator: This evening we adjusted the temperature settings in our freezer and refrigerator. Both of these settings were colder than the manufacturer suggested, so we should be able to save at least a few cents by doing this. You might be able to save by doing this also.

We’re also looking at getting new efficient windows. According to the research my wife Miel’s been doing, this should slash our power bill by 10 percent or so.

Hope this helps! Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve got any additional ideas!

Best,

James

Emotional Intelligence in Couples Finance

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This post is in follow up to the many great comments that were left in reaction to our latest post on battles over money. This post, and reactions to it, were great reminders to me of why we began blogging and what opportunity this gives to us as a couple, and to our readers, in contemplating the more difficult aspects of money.

When it comes down to it, making money is the relative easy part of things. We all know the basics of math, but developing strategies to dealing with money can be harder to do. Whether living within ones means or accumulating wealth, similar issues are faced in the emotional side of money. I suppose this is a central reason in why many people in relative affluence continue to face challenges when it comes to finances. While we hate to be reminded of our on weaknesses, emotional responses to money are highly influential in our long financial health. Just as is the case with emotional eating, spending and saving habits often go back to our deepest hopes and fears.

In handling finances within a relationship it important to develop ones emotional intelligence in terms of finances. Just as this will be crucial to getting ahead in the work place, developing a sense of priorities and knowing how to navigate finances as a couple will be essential to the success of any relationship. Whether finances are something that a couple discusses often or is something that is ignored until a problem surfaces, financial management affects every couple. Whether just scraping by or making your next million, couples at all levels must develop skills to cope with the pitfalls of finances.

We are happy to provide a platform for couples to consider the issues that come up in every day life and hopefully find tidbits that are helpful to others facing similar issues.

Thanks for reading!

Miel

Our Recent Battling Over Money

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This is a joint posting dealing with a recent conflict we had over money…

Miel: Fellow DINKs will certainly hear the call of having different weaknesses when it comes to expenses. James & I enjoyed a nice weekend together after my being out of the country for a couple of weeks. This included going out to dinner together on Friday and then out with friends on Saturday. Top it off with an afternoon run to the store for goodies and a stop off at blockbuster, and that’s easily more than a hundred in little splurges here and there.

The trouble started when I picked up a task that I’d been meaning to take care of for awhile, aka distracting myself from a term paper I’ve been working on. I’ve been trying to find a place to sit in our bedroom. Currently we have no place to sit other than our bed, the one space we do have is very small and I have been trying to find the perfect piece of furniture for some time. I discussed this with James a month or so ago and he finally relented to agree that I could buy something if I wanted to. At the time I searched but didn’t find anything for the price I was willing to pay.

However, last night when I finally had found what I was looking for and James checked in to see what I was up to, he began to protest. The protest became a disgruntled dismissal as I went to bed.

The lesson I’m reminded of is at what price does being right come at. Sure, I believe that it is reasonable of me to what a place to sit and study in my own bedroom, and James believes that money would be better spent investing. Since neither of us is likely to have a change in heart completely, isn’t it best is to call a truce and manage out differences? James will chime in and share his side of the story now…

James: Miel has done a pretty good job of laying out the situation, so I won’t say anything more about how the argument got started. My feelings on the issue are the following: Miel and I have jointly agreed to reach a net-worth goal of 4 million dollars by the time we retire. Ultimately, every dollar we spend on furniture, clothing, etc., is a dollar that’s taking away from our goals.

So, while its important to balance having a comfortable lifestyle with other goals, I tend to balk at larger purchases, like the chair that Miel had in mind. That said, marriage is about negotiation so its important to have some give and take. Thank goodness my wife Miel is a reasonable woman! Most of the time we handle disagreements without too much fallout and they normally blow over in a day or so.

Miel&James

WaMu Sucks!

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My father just caught me on the phone talking about going to the Eastern Shore with friends. He reminded me that it’s called the coast by fellow West Coasters. Another sign that I’ve converted to Eastern mentalities is my passionate dislike of Washington Mutual. I used to be a typical Oregonian who loved Washington Mutual. I could wax poetically about how fabulous the no fee ATMs were and how friendly the local teller was.

I moved to the East Coast and initially kept my WaMu account and stubbornly did not convert to any local banks. There were some down sides about not having a local bank, but frankly what was available wasn’t much better from what I could tell.

Now that I’ve recently converted to ING Electric Orange Checking I see how much better things can be. I enjoy great online banking, a real person picking up the phone, and best of all interest accruing every month.

After continuing to deal with irksome hassles with WaMu, including their mortgage departments, I feel the incessant need to rant and rave about all the things that suck about WaMu.

  • Scheduled website outages that always fall on the weekend when I’m dealing with banking issues.
  • No customer service access to a human on the weekends for their mortgages. I can’t tell you how awful this part is.
  • State to state banking doesn’t communicate at all. In this case James & I tried to set up a bank joint bank account a couple of years ago when we started saving for our place. Since there aren’t any banks in DC we set up an account when we went to NYC for the weekend. It took us over an hour to set up an account, and once we did it took us another three months to get it set up fully, one big SNAFU. Once it was set up, it couldn’t communicate with the accounts that were set up in Oregon. Hassle is not even the word. (In retrospect I should have left WaMu at this time.)
  • Mortgages and checking accounts can’t be seen on the same online banking platform. This means that you have to switch back and forth to deal with the same institution.
  • To top it all off, I sent in three different letters to change my name after marriage and they still couldn’t get their act together. Even with copies of the legal document from the judge who finalized my name change and my new social security card they still wanted a bunch of notarized paper work. I didn’t even have to do that much to change my social! To top it off, the home loans department would change my name but the banking folks wanted me to jump more hoops. You know the answer to that: ING Orange Electric.
  • To add insult to injury, I can’t even close my accounts since I don’t live near a WaMu. Plus we are stuck with WaMu on our mortgage since we won’t likely refinance any time soon.

I know it might not be that interesting to listen to me rant about WaMu, but keep these lessons in mind when demanding the most from your banking institutions. Find out when you are signing up for an account what their support services are like. Or just switch to ING…

Best,

Miel

Ayn Rand on Money…

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Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns–or dollars. Take your choice–there is no other.

Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982), Atlas Shrugged

Big Money In the Virtual World

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If you’re like us DINKs, you’ve probably heard about the informal economies that are sprouting up around many popular on-line multiplayer computer games. Basically, the main idea here is that some on-line games like Everquest, World of Warcraft or Second Life are so popular that people are willing to spend money on goods and service related to their game play. This phenomenon goes under a couple of names, “synthetic economies”, “fantasy economies” or “virtual economies”.

There are several interesting dimensions to these virtual economies. First, in some ways, they parallel brick and mortal markets. For example, rarer goods in virtual economies tend to command higher prices. If you surf over to mogs.com, a website selling characters from the multi-player fantasy adventure game World of Warcraft, you’ll see that higher level characters fetch a significantly greater asking price. Also, it seems that for some games, buying male characters is more expensive than female characters, suggesting that gender inequalities are reflected in the virtual world. Finally, some problems like crime and inflation are also present.

Second, mainstream economics has largely ignored these virtual markets. For example, Edward Castronova, the first economist to seriously look at this topic, initially had a hard time getting published in peer-reviewed academic journals. Most of the time his stuff got rejected because mainstream economists did not really understand how to value virtual goods.

While we DINKs aren’t experts, it seems ignoring these markets is a mistake. Virtual economics can be big business. For example, Second Life users reportedly engage in $500,000 worth of transactions per day. Other media reports suggest that in China, some companies exist simply to generate goods and services in high demand in these computer games, such as farming “gold” and “avatars” to sell on secondary markets. In short, virtual economies are becoming big business. It would be silly to write them off.

Now, what are the implications of this for personal finance? First, it would make sense to keep a eye on computer game companies which incorporate these markets into their corporate architecture. It might be possible to charge transaction fees to improve corporate profits. Second, if you’re a hard core gamer (I’m sure some of you are), you might actually be worth more than you think. Your level 70 World of Warcraft character might not be a badge of neerdyness after all. Rather it might be worth cold hard cash on the open market!

Happy Gaming!

Best,

James

Blogger Spotlight: Saving For Wealth

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Hello People!

Today’s posting highlights a new and up and coming blogger! Jackie is an attorney, MIT graduate and author of Saving For Wealth. What makes Jackie’s blog stand out is that fact that she’s a practicing lawyer in the area of business and wealth management.

Most of us bloggers do something other than manage money for living, but Jackie brings a novel professional voice to her writing. She’s penned on a number of topic including estate planning, 401k investing and the basics of wealth management. If you’re interested in a fresh perspective, check out Saving for Wealth!

Best,

James

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