Listed rather prominently on the Yahoo! Finance homepage is the announcement of eight new columnists (though nine biographies are listed, I’m assuming Suze Orman is considered an “old” columnist). If you look at the biography list, it has a few of the recent personal finance highfliers - David Bach of The Automatic Millionaire fame, Robert Kiyosaki who authored Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Suze Orman, Jeremy Siegel (Stock for the Long Run) and famed television star - Ben Stein. Three of the nine have Ph.D.’s, most of them have written a book or two, and each will probably be able to provide a good reason to return to Yahoo! Finance after the market closes. The ones I didn’t immediately recognize include Professor Charles Wheelan (he wrote Naked Economics), Laura Rowley (author of Money & Happiness: A Guide to Living the Good Life), Ken Dychtwald (he’s written a bunch of retirement books), and Daniel Pink (he wrote A Whole New Mind). If you have the time I suggest hopping on over as each one has written an introductory post to give you a taste of what he or she will be trying to offer. It’s rare that you get in at the ground floor of a column but here’s your chance.

My friend Melissa, a rabid Baltimore Orioles fan, told me yesterday about a designated driver program available at Camden Yards. There is a booth operated by Aramark where if you present a driver’s license, are over twenty-one, and sign a document indicating you won’t drink then you will get two free coupons for soft drinks. Details from the Baltimore Orioles website:

(read full article…)

There are a lot of websites out there that blog about Mad Money and recap the entire show in painful detail for you. Some go as deep as listing every call in the Lightning Round and indicating Cramer’s opinion. TheStreet.com Staff writers also produce a detailed recap each show which probably guarantees that their recap is complete and correct (something difficult to believe when it’s one person typing furiously at their computer day after day). In addition to listing every company Cramer is bearish or bullish on; they discuss the interviews held, the opinions expounded, and the other little things mentioned on the show. If you’re a fan of Cramer, who looks perpetually on the precipice of an aneurysm, you’ll want to make these recaps part of your daily read.

It’s predicted by practically everyone that’s capable of reading the legend of this CNN map that the price of gas is going to go up. By 1AM Sunday, according to NOAA’s prediction of its path, there will be seventeen large refineries and twelve small refineries within its influence, not to count the number of offshore refineries not represented in this map. According to Michael Schlacter, the chief meteorologist for Weather 2000, it doesn’t even matter where Rita makes landfall because “Anywhere within 60 miles of the eye will get clobbered.” Comparatively, Katrina shut down fifteen refineries which represented 3.3 million barrels a day of refining capacity. Read the full CNN article for yourself… they (and Peter Beutel of an energy risk management firm named Cameron Hanover) are predicting $5 a gallon!

Perhaps this will spur on more discussion of our heavy reliance on petroleum (rather this than some terrorist event/attack, right?). Read onward for a list of specific refineries affected and their typical outputs:

(read full article…)

I’ve never sold a house so I don’t entirely understand their side of the process (so take this article with a grain of salt), but I do know what I looked for as a buyer. I do know that not a lot (percentage-wise) of buyers go online and search for homes on the For Sale By Owner websites so as a seller your potential market is already smaller. I also know that a buyer agent, which most buyers will have, has little or no incentive to show their clients an FSBO… that’s another factor decreasing your potential market. Finally, even if you do find a buyer, they will have to bring “buyer agent-like expertise” to the closing table (if they even make it that far) which is something a total novice probably won’t be able to do, let alone feel comfortable doing. But ignoring the final point expertise point, which was the main thrust of the previous article, you’re still betting that an educated buyer (or buyers preferably) in search of a FSBO will find your house and put in a competitive offer. I think that is a dangerous bet to be making.

(read full article…)

One of the books I started reading recently is titled Hot Property : The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization, which is all about counterfeiting and how it affects… well, basically everything. The books starts off by throwing a bone to the fake Rolex’s and Louis Vuitton bags, then delves into how it affects you (airplane part manufacturers selling parts not to spec, re-dated perishables like rubber, etc), how pervasive counterfeiting is, etc. Well, this brought me to thinking about Chinatown, NY and the sale of counterfeit products. Would you buy something that’s fake?

Here’s how it works if you want to buy a fake purse or shiny thing in Chinatown… you go down to Canal Street in Manhattan and nine times out of ten, someone will approach you and drop a brand’s name (Tiffany? Louis? Prada?). If you’re interested, you’ll perk up and look at them. They’ll flash out a catalog (or a large semi-glossy page) of products with prices listed underneath. If you say yes, you basically follow them down an alley to a back room where they’ll have boxes full of this fake stuff.

The alternative is you walk to one of the storefronts, preferably one of those incredibly narrow and deep stores that already sells Proda, Lovis, and Tiffony’s (Po1o is popular too) stuff anyway and is “not quite” counterfeit. Walk up to the guy running the show and ask him if he or she has other, better purses. They’ll look at you and probably will take you back into a room. It’ll be behind a pseudo false door (the walls are all slotted so you can hang stuff off them, the one in the back simply opens up to the storeroom) and the tiny room will be PACKED with cardboard boxes. He/she will show you a few purses, haggle briefly, and either you’ll buy it or they’ll shuttle you out.

I’ve actually never bought a fake purse (I don’t carry a purse and its ridiculously bad form to give it as a gift to a girl when you’re a guy, but somehow awesome if you’re a girl giving it to a friend though, it’s a horrible double standard!) but I’ve been on many a trip to the nebulous black market of high end accessories. I would say most people don’t realize how easy it is to get counterfeit products in the States (everyone knows of the $1 DVD movies or $10 for Microsoft Office 2003 in Hong Kong, but that requires a trip to Hong Kong and some sweating in customs)… so would you buy a fake purse if it meant chopping 80-90% off the price?

Also, from what people tell me, quite often when you go to Asia and see products really cheap, it’s not because the products are counterfeit but because they are stolen. With all the production in Asia, often times the workers steal a few to sell. Either way, it’s still illegal stuff. Incidentally, I wrote this article because I thought people would find it an interesting read on how simple the infamous “NY Chinatown black market” is and this isn’t meant as a guide or anything to help you buy illegal goods. Since it is illegal, you could get in serious trouble for buying stolen goods or counterfeit products.

A lot of folks sign up to ING Direct to get the $25 signup bonus (email me if you want the referral link, you get $25 and I get $10) but then hesitate to sign up for the 4.0% that Emigrant offers because they don’t want to withdraw money from ING to their account and then send it over to Emigrant. Well, the solution is presented quite elegantly (and less verbose than I have below) by MyMoneyBlog. What you need to do is open an account at both ING Direct and Emigrant, make the required deposits, and then supply ING with the details so you can link the two accounts.

1. Once both accounts are open, write down the account number from your Emigrant Direct account.
2. Then login to your ING account, click on “click here” where it states: “For information on your Externally Linked Accounts click here” at the top of the screen.
3. Click on the “Add Link” button.
4. It should show you a picture of a check and three boxes, a gray box, and orange box, and a blue box. Into the gray box enter “Emigrant Savings Bank.” Into the orange box enter “226070319.” And finally, into the blue box, enter your Emigrant Direct account number.
5. Within a few days (for me it was three), there should be two small deposits into your Emigrant Direct account: write these down.
6. Login to your ING Direct account. A popup window should appear telling you that you linked an account and that your services will be limited until you confirm the two small deposits, click on the orange text “Confirm.”
7. A window should appear giving you two boxes to enter the two small deposits, enter them.
8. Once you complete all the steps, the Emigrant account will be linked just as your other account is and you have the freedom to transfer between the two as you please!

The best strategy is to get someone who already has an account to send you a referral email and you’ll get $25 (and they get $10). After it clears, open an Emigrant Direct account, link the two, and transfer all but $1.00 from ING to Emigrant Direct. If ING tops the 4.0% interest, then transfer it back. No need to use another account as a middleman (and waste time). Hope that helps and again, kudos to Jonathan for figuring this out.

With the increase in short term interest rates by the Fed, Emigrant Direct is now offering 4% interest on their American Dream accounts. Four percent! That’s better than a lot of CDs.

For information on Emigrant Direct itself, read my review on opening the account and some easy to follow instructions.

If you went to college within the last ten years, you’ll recognize that a lot more of the information once distributed in class and on paper is now available entirely online. If you were diligent enough, you could read all the course notes from a prestigious college without having to pay a cent in tuition or in books (you wouldn’t, however, get the networking or the benefit of a capable instructor, two critical selling points of actually going to a school). Well, in the spirit of such openness, MIT OpenCourseWare is one central place where MIT lists all its freely available course materials. There are 34 departments ranging from Aeronautics & Astronautics to Writing and Humanistic Studies and each department is chock full of course (23 in Writing and Humanistic Studies).

(read full article…)

I thought about laser eye surgery, or Lasik as the cool kids call it, many years ago when it first became available. We didn’t have the money to consider it (still probably don’t) and I always considered it a spurious expense for the rich (it was significantly more expensive back then). But since then the technology has improved, the costs have come down, and I have a full-time job. The downside is that I also have a full-time mortgage payment regardless of how good my vision is. I currently wear contacts and it costs me about $120 for contacts (2 week Acuvue 2’s), about another $50ish for an eye exam, and $150 for a pair of glasses every two or three years (as I invariable step on old ones, scratch them, or otherwise inadvertently abuse them) - but through work I have a vision plan where I pay about $3-$4 a month and get a huge chunk of my costs knocked off my bill. So… is Lasik worth it?

According to AllAboutVision.com, the procedure has been increasing in cost due to better technology and more options but will probably run around $2,000 per eye.

I pay approximately $4 per month ($48/yr) for eye coverage and then an additional $120 a year for contacts (they cost more but my insurance covers the remainder). That’s still only a yearly outlay of $170 - so it would take nearly 24 years until the breakeven point, from a cost perspective. Let’s say I threw in new glasses every two years, or $75 a year, that’s $245 a year (that’s a lot!) for a breakeven point of 16.3 years! I suppose the benefit of not having to wear glasses or contacts covers the difference for most people otherwise it wouldn’t be as popular as it is.

Is my math wrong or is Lasik so much better than just slapping in contacts in the morning? I know money isn’t everything, quality of life is, so I do understand the decision to undergo the procedure but the difference was a lot larger than I anticipated.