Archive for the 'money' Category

05-26-2007

Cell Phone Security Tips

David Boch’s blog on Yahoo! Finance recently had an eye opening post about cell phone security. I consider myself relatively security conscious, but I hadn’t considered the potential financial consequences of a lost or stolen cell phone.

In addition to some harrowing stories of lost phones, the article also offers some basic tips for keeping yours safe. It’s important to keep in mind that it’s not in a cell phone company’s best interest to watch out for you, so be diligent in guarding and protecting your own phone.

Eileen Perrera’s story revealed what happened after her phone was stolen while she was on vacation. She filed a police report and contacted Sprint immediately, but then received a bill totaling almost $16,000. Sprint claimed to have never received the call from her reporting the stolen cell phone.

Eileen was able to submit proof from landline phone records that she had indeed called Sprint customer service. As her late fees piled up, the situation remained unresolved for months.

Since the tips in the post were a bit basic, I did some more digging and found a similar story on Bruce Schneier’s blog, which includes some good security tips in the comments.

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Posted by Matt in money, tech | No Comments »

01-19-2007

Profile of 8 Lottery Losers

I ran across a sad, yet fascinating article about 8 lottery winners who lost their millions via the I Will Teach You to Be Rich blog. I’m sure there are other profiles of lottery winners out there and I bet they’d make for a fascinating book. There are a variety of reasons I don’t play the lottery, but the article left me with even more reasons not to.

William “Bud” Post won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery in 1988 but now lives on his Social Security.

“I wish it never happened. It was totally a nightmare,” says Post.

A former girlfriend successfully sued him for a share of his winnings. It wasn’t his only lawsuit. A brother was arrested for hiring a hit man to kill him, hoping to inherit a share of the winnings. Other siblings pestered him until he agreed to invest in a car business and a restaurant in Sarasota, Fla., — two ventures that brought no money back and further strained his relationship with his siblings.

Post even spent time in jail for firing a gun over the head of a bill collector. Within a year, he was $1 million in debt.

Post admitted he was both careless and foolish, trying to please his family. He eventually declared bankruptcy.

Now he lives quietly on $450 a month and food stamps.

Posted by Matt in money, reading | No Comments »

01-11-2007

Living Thriftily for a Year, a Month, or Even a Day

Now that the holidays are over and the new year has begun, it’s a good time to rethink personal spending. A Time Magazine article entitled The Year of Living Thriftily, details a trend that started recently of people making a commitment to scale back their consumerism.

A little over a year ago, 10 friends got together in San Francisco over a potluck dinner. There were a few teachers, a technology marketer, an engineer, a dog handler. What would it be like, they wondered amid the Christmas shopfest, if they all pledged not to buy anything new except food, medicine and essential toiletries for a year? Thus was born a movement that they named, in a light-hearted way, after the 1621 Mayflower Compact. “We are a group of individuals committed to a 12-month flight from the consumer grid,” they wrote in a chat-room manifesto that lists their aims as going “beyond recycling,” reducing clutter in their homes and simplifying their lives: “Borrow, barter or buy used.”

Serendipitously, Amanda and I are part-way through our own scaled down — one month — version of the same idea. Just a couple weeks has definitely helped us refocus on simplifying our lives. Before running across the article above, we had already talked about limiting our non-essential buying to one weekend per month, once this month is up. Maybe we’ll take the plunge and try for an entire year of not buying anything new.

In the past, I’ve taken a year-long hiatus from eating meat, drinking sodas, and watching television. My eating, drinking, and watching habits have all been lessened significantly after each year-long fast.

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Posted by Matt in money | No Comments »

06-14-2006

An Easy Way to Support Open Source Software

I’d like to share some information on how you may be able to support open source software with very little effort. Though dates can vary, the fiscal year for some organizations ends on June 30. To help justify budgets, managers often scramble to spend every last penny by the close of the budget cycle. It may be an opportune time to suggest a donation to support open source projects. To help justify a donation, you can point to specific foundations that support the software your organization uses.

This year I tried to get money donated to some of the open source projects in use where I work. Though management liked the idea, this year’s budget surplus will go instead to cover other budget shortfalls. However, I’d like to share the information with others, in the hopes that it might help someone else arrange a donation to their favorite open source projects.

Below are links to information about donating to various open source non-profits. All of these foundations are IRS 501(c)(3) non-profits, according to their respective websites.:

If you manage to arrange a donation by your employer, I’d be interested in hearing about it in the comments.

Posted by Matt in money, tech | 2 Comments »

05-26-2006

Economics of Leisure

A recent New York Times article on the founder of the Geek Squad computer repair service includes some interesting information about the economics of leisure time:

The results from two online calculators that determine what your time is worth may surprise you. Try http://hughchou.org/calc/realwage.php or http://moneycentral.msn.com/…. First, your hourly rate may be lower than you think. For instance, someone making $70,000 a year, but who puts in 50 hours a week and commutes an hour each way, may discover the hourly rate is not $33, but about half that.

So does that mean you hire a handyman only when he costs less than $16 an hour? It’s more complicated than that. With only about 12 hours of true leisure time a day, each precious hour is bought with more than 5 hours of work. According to the calculator, each hour of spare time would then be worth about $85.

The idea ties in with a very enlightening presentation Daniel Gilbert gave at SXSW on How to Do Precisely the Right Thing at All Possible Times. He explains why many decisions are not as cut-and-dried as they appear. A podcast of Gilbert’s presentation is available, along with many others on the SXSW site.

I haven’t yet read Gilbert’s book, Stumbling on Happiness, but it has been getting some good reviews. It’s definitely on my list to read soon.

Posted by Matt in money, business, lifehacks, tech | No Comments »

01-20-2006

Priceline Hotels Article on Lifehacker

My article, “How to book a five star hotel on a budget” was recently posted to Lifehacker. The article explains how to use BiddingForTravel.com to research hotel prices before bidding on Priceline. It’s my first article for Lifehacker and I look forward to writing more.

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Posted by Matt in money, writing, travel | 3 Comments »

01-02-2006

Check Washing and “The Art of the Steal”

I first read about check washing in Frank W. Abagnale’s book The Art of the Steal. Thieves use solvents to remove the ink from checks. They cover the signature with tape to preseve it and can then rewrite the payee and amounts. I just found a web page demonstrating check washing techniques. The article concludes with mostly obvious precautions of not leaving checks in your mailbox, shreding old checks, and checking statements. Less obviously, it also recommends using gel-based pens because their ink is the hardest to remove.

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Posted by Matt in money, reading, general | 1 Comment »

11-19-2005

Black Friday vs. Buy Nothing Day

Black Friday is almost here—lots of crazy deals, the day after Thanksgiving. If you’re interested, a site called Black Friday 2005 has already posted lists of what will be on sale at most major retailers. The Fat Wallet Forums also have plenty of information, mostly in the OFFICIAL Black Friday 2005 Thread.

I feel obligated to also mention Buy Nothing Day, brought to you by Adbusters.

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Posted by Matt in money, business | No Comments »

11-04-2005

Great Deals on Magazine Subscriptions

I’ve been wanting to subscribe to several magazines that I’m interested in writing for, but I was waiting until I could find the best deal possible. In scouring the FatWallet forums, I ran across two great resources. The first is a price search site for magazine subscriptions, called MagazinePriceSearch.com

MagazinePriceSearch.com saves you time and money by continually monitoring subscription prices for 2552 magazines from 24 online magazine merchants, plus 63 coupons, and compiling everything into one easy to use site!

Surprisingly, the other source of inexpensive subscriptions I found was eBay. In the end, for each of the three magazines I ordered this week, I found the best prices on eBay. I made sure to check seller ratings and that none of the sellers auto-renew the subscriptions, so it actually felt safer than ordering the same magazine from one of the dozens of discount subscription websites.

Posted by Matt in money, writing, reading | No Comments »