May
26
Immigration Reform
It seems to be the issue of the year at the moment--immigration. When I watch discussions about the topic I usually get terribly annoyed by the redefinition of illegal to undocumented. I've atually heard some people claim that undocumented is a synonym for illegal, yeah right, our education system must be worse than we thought. Maybe we should start redefining other terms too. For example, drug dealers could become undocumented healthcare professionals, and murderers could become undocumented law enforcement officials.
I understand that it is impractical to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, as much as I would like too I realize it is not a feasible solution. I believe that we should offer a plan for some of those who are here illegally to become citizens given they pay hefty fines, all back taxes, etc., etc. It's not a fair solution, the only fair thing would be to ship all the illegals back and allow those who have been following the proper procedure to come here legally.
I also think we should change the constitution such that someone born on american soil whose parents are here illegally is NOT a citizen but should enjoy the same illegal state as their parents. I don't expect this will ever happen but I think it's a good thing.
Anyway, my two cents on the hot political topic of the day.
May
24
An introduction to personal finance
The other day Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified before congress and stressed the need for our society to become financially literate. As a nation we have a negative savings rate and federal programs meant to suppliment retirement income are in serous financial trouble if things keep going the way they are.
I enjoy finance quite a bit and think it is a key element to being a good steward. Fortuantely it's not all that hard either, even though it may seem overwhelming at first. Lately, some of my friends have asked me about good financial practices so I decided to write up a few articles on the subject. I doubt I will say anything new or particularly ground breaking; but, I figure if the goal is to raise the financial know how of the country the more sources of information the better.
So that brings me to step 1 in any good financial plan: a budget. Knowing how much money you have and where it is going is critical in planning your future financial success. If you take a stroll your local Barnes & Noble and browse the financial section almost all of them will have a section on good budgeting practices. The way I see it there are 3 steps to a successful budget:
- Creating the plan (knowing how much you expect to make and how much you epect to spend)
- Executing the plan
- And finally, reviewing the plan.
The first step is pretty straight forward. Figure out how much money you have available to you and how much you need to spend. I would suggest only budgetting for items which are required, such as mortgage, electric & gas bills, etc. Other items that are not necessary but nice to have like cable T.V., dining out, etc. can come out of discretionary spending. It's important not to overcategorize things or it will be much more difficult to keep the budget. A typical Budget May look like the following:
Monthly Budget
Income: $5.000
Expenditures:
- $1,000.00 Federal and State Taxes
- $1,000.00 Mortgage and associated fees
- $100 Electric
- $50 Gas
- $50 Water
- $400 Food
- $50 Clothes
As you can see only the essential items are budgeted leaving the rest for discretionary purposes. Not too hard, right? The next step is to actually put the budget in practice. Set aside dollars for the budgeted items first and then use the rest for discretionary purposes. You may also want to make a discrtionary budget that is separate from your main budget. This allows you to set hard rules that the main budget cannot be broken but the discretionary is only a guidline.
After you have tried the budget out for a month, you are ready for the final step--review. I believe this is one of the most important components of a successful budget but seems to get the least amount of page time. At the end of the month figure out exactly where you did end up spending your money and make sure you actually met your budget. If you didn't figure out what went wrong and adjust appropriately. The key part is that the budget balances to 0 or greater, not less. This is also a good time to take a look at how much you are actually spending on certain things. For example maybe you get a $5.00 mocha every day, that's $150.00 a month which you may not think is necessary. By dropping the mocha you make room for other things that you may find more valuable.
So far we haven't talked about any kind of savings or investing which I will hopefully get to at some future date but for now I'd say we would all be pretty successful if we had a firm grasp on where we were spending our money and allocating the dollars in a more efficient way than before.
May
23
Ryanhood
Saw Ryanhood over the weekend with some friends. They were opening for Matt Kearny. It was an awesome concert. I highly recommend that you check them out: http://www.ryanhoodmusic.com/
May
11
Call centers
I've been waiting for a rather important package over the last couple of days. It was supposed to be delivered today by BAX Global (i'd never heard of them either). Anyway I went online to check the status of the package and the site said it was in Toledo, OH. That concerned me because the package was guaranteed to be delivered today by 3:00pm. So I called up their help line and the guy answers: "LHM Mort... uh, BAX Global, how can I help you?" Obviously BAX contracts a call center which handles support calls for several companies, I've just never had somebody mistakingly answer with the wrong company name. Pretty humorous really, fortunately the package was delivered on time and safely :)
May
09
Strike 1, 2, 3 your out!
We've been working for the past several weeks to evaluate some high performance NAS boxes. They look really cool but I have yet to get my hands on one. The company we are purchasing them from said, oh it'll be there on Monday. Unfortunately it wasn't properly tested in time to get here on Monday, so it was supposed to arrive on Tuesday, sadly there was a miscommunication with the shipping department and it did not get shipped in time. End result--it won't be here till Wednesday (tomorrow, hopefully). The reason I find this blog worthy though is the manner in which they dealt with these failures. I've work with several companies who simply don't take responsibility for their mistakes, no apologies, no attempts to correct the situation. I can't stand working with those companies. But this particular company suprised me, they took responsibility, apologized and it appears they are making a sincere effort to fix their initial mistakes. Now that is the kind of company I want to do business with.
For the most part my worst business dealings usually come from dealing with HP (Hewlett Packard) so to all the HP's of the world, take note:
1) Take responsibility for your mistakes and apologize. Everyone realizes no one is perfect, a little humility can go a long way.
2) When you screw up correct the sitaution. Even if it means a short term loss for the company. In the long run a strong customer relationship will probably prove more valuable.
3) And finally, don't make promises you cannot keep, be honest with your customers and they will be more willing to come to you for future requests.
Just my simple two cents of how one should conduct business, these are fairly simple and intuitive things that any first grader should be able to tell you but, astonishingly you'd be surprised how many people do not conduct business in this manner.
May
06
The Future of America
Bill Gross, bond investor extraordinaire from Pimco Funds, recently equated General Motors to a canary in a coal mine. He believes that the troubles GM is currently facing will be the troubles America will see down the road. You can read his complete argument on the pimco website (pimco.com). I think that this is a very interesting; but very scary piece. America has been the dominant economic power for as long as I have lived and it is scary to think what we might become because we have altogether become greedy, lazy, and selfish. We are the richest people in the world, and yet we currently have a negative savings rate, investment in long term research is on the decline, and our education system is struggling to inspire kids in math and science.
I do not wish to be yet another prophet of doom, we seem to have enough of those already. But the challenges that face us in the years to come are not simple problems and I am very interested in whether we will rise to the challenge and show the world what we are really made of.
May
03
Posts
I noticed that all my recent posts have expired from the front page, so I thought it would be prudent to add one. I'll write something interestesting ... or at least more interesting shortly!
