Ways to help your monthly cash flow

I found this interesting article from Kiplinger and on Yahoo! Finance about 20 ways to waste (or not waste) your money.

I think the big ones for myself are Numbers 1, 5, 10, 12, and 18. We all could do better.

Click here to read the article and see if there are areas you can improve as well.

VW and Porsche saga finally winding down

Here's a nice summary of everything that has happened in the last four years. Click here for the Yahoo! Finance article. Porsche failed in its bid to take over VW (David and Goliath sort of deal) and now is ending up being merged into VW and will likely be one of the VW brands.

With increased Reward comes increased Risk. Market forces will drive them to balance each other out.

Using Variable Ratio/Variable Reward to encourage saving

I just read this interesting piece by Jason Zweig about a bank that is offering prizes (or raffles) just for opening a bank account.

We all know that variable ratio / variable reward is the best way to encourage behaviors. Think of gambling (don't know when you're going to win or how much you're going to win) or even other activities such as golf (don't know when the next good shot will come or how great it will be).

Of course, the rates are a little lower than current market and the differential is how the credit union pays for the "prizes." The article reports the following: "You are sort of betting, but there's no losing."

But in reality, there is losing because of the differential in return and losses to inflation. How you make it up is in the risk/reward ratio. If you contribute the minimum like the reported person who placed only $25 in their CD (Certificate of Deposit) and won $400, the ratio is more justified as compared with someone who opens their CD with $100,000 and wins $400, but misses out in $1,000 for every 1 percent interest rate differential.

60 minutes: Following the Trail of E-Waste

Alright. One of my friends brought reality back. Reminded me of this segment of 60 Minutes which airs on the CBS network. Of note, it's the only show (that I know of) that doesn't have a theme song other than a ticking stopwatch.

They ran a tragic and unfortunate segment following the trail of how e-Waste is supposed to be recycled and what really happens in some cases. You'll have to watch it yourself.

Click here to be taken there.

Update on Color Laser Printer deal from Staples

If you've been keeping up, you read about my purchase of a new Brother Color Laser Printer 4040CN from Staples on this previous post. To summarize, the final price was aroud $175 (plus taxes on the original price).

It arrived last Friday and I installed it today. Here's the predicament:

• The printer came with regular toner cartridges which should be good for 1,500 pages for color and 2,500 for black/white (typical yield). Based on prices on my original post, it would cost me about $293 to replace all 4 cartridges.

So what to do in 1 or 2 years (depending on actual usage), keeping in mind that I use my black and white all-in-one for greater than 98 percent of printing "jobs." Find another deal for a color laser similar to this at $175 for the printer with new cartridges or pay $293 to replace them over time?

If the "new" one is faster and better resolution and it is cheaper overall, the answer will likely be an easy one.

Here is my initial output review after printing three pages. I can tell it is 2400x600 dpi when looked at closely. I took it off of draft print (prints at 600x600 dpi) and put it on "Vivid" output. The baseline, normal settings are a little dull.

I haven't needed to gift or use the free digital camera. If anything comes up, I'll keep you posted.

Update on Porsche / VW Saga: Porsche loses...

I had previously posted about Porsche's Risk/Reward situation. Click here to read that. Now rumors are going around that instead of Porsche ending up controlling or taking over VW, it is going to be the other way around.

In this recent Reuters article on NYTimes.com Porsche's debt has climbed to more than 10 billion Euros. This Time.com article (from May 2009) reports that Porsche's sales were recently only 9.3 billion Euros. Porsche really leveraged themselves this time and are paying for it, especially in this contracting automobile market.

The price for Porsche is 11.28 billion Euros and the outgoing Porsche CEO may get more than 100 million Euros (for getting Porsche into this mess starting back in 2005).

Porsche took the risk for the reward, and this time it's not paying off. VW was 16 times the size or Porsche.

Forbes Editorial/Blog RE: Nuclear Power for Iran, but not the U.S.

In addition to Money Magazine, I'm also getting Forbes magazine for free. Looks like Forbes will be coming to my mailbox until May 2010 (if I read their label correctly).

In this blog entry by Rich Karlgaard (Forbes.com and Forbes magazine), he discusses how Obama supports Iran in its quest for Nuclear Power, but not many in the U.S. want increased nuclear power here. The U.S. gets only 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power vs. France's 50 percent.

I wonder what the energy "crisis" would look like if we had not stopped making nuclear power plants back in 1980.