Archive for the ‘Financial Literacy’ Category

Are you Money Smart$$$?

September 22nd, 2008 Vijaianand

“Money Smart” – I recently came across this catchy phrase when I was checking about Houston Money Week 2008. It is a week long event put together by Federal Reserve partnered with few financial instituations in and around houston to create financial literacy. It has be cancelled because of Hurricane IKE. Lets get back on the talk about “Money Smartness”. This phrase really intrigued me because it tells the core concepts of my money really matters mantra. I even incorporated it in my slogan as “Get Money Smart, The Right way!!”


Are you Money Smart?


Let’s take a quick moment and ask some questions to ourselves and figure out.
Are you the one,
clipping coupons for every grocery item you can find in any grocery store ad?

always try to be the first in line for any door busters sale beating the crowd?

who signs up for every freebie coupons and free raffles?

who checks the internet to find the cheapest gas station nearby?


The list just goes on and on. I don’t see anything wrong in saving money in whatever way possible. I agree with phrase, “A Dollar saved is Two earned”(Check out mymoney blog for the proof). But, only these activities won’t make one a Money Smart person. It is just one part of the Pie. There are few other important portions of the Pie which is as important as Spending.


What is Money Smart?



Money Smartness$$ is about “Making extra, Spending wisely, Saving graciously and Managing rightly”


Let me dwell into it more deeply and share my perspective on each of them.

Make extra – We all know, everybody needs money for survival and we all work towards earning that very money. You ask me, we are already earning it with whatever time we have. What do you mean Make extra? How can I make extra if I can only spend certain hours a day? Answer is, Yes You can make money in lot of other easy ways even while you are working. You are earning to pay bills using your hard learned educational knowledge. You can turn your passion or hobbies as a money making machine.


Spend wisely – We all got to spend money to live our life. We need a place to live, food to eat, clothes to dress decently, go places, do charity and list adds up as our need grows. It upto to us to sort out and prioritize which need is more essential and channel our spending to the right important ones. For example, if you really need a car to commute, instead of taking a cruise or vacation you better spend that money to buy a decent car. Spending for the right need at right the time with right price is totally wise thing to do.
 

Save graciously – Savings is like antibodies for a healthy family. If you store up health antibodies, it will help you make your body immune to bad disease. Simiarly, without any type of savings your family will sure to struggle when there is a urgent or emergency need for money. So Putting away money on periodic basis will help you save lot of frustration and save you from falling in debt. You don’t have to open a bank account to do it. You can even use your child piggy bank to start throwing away your pennies and dimies every day which will eventually grow in tens of dollars.


Manage rightly – You make the money and you should be in control of it. You shouldn’t let others make decision for you. You take their advise but you manage the way you want your money to be managed. They are not going to be living with the loss or gain. It is you and you only who is going to take the hit or miss. So Manage Money in the right way by investing in right place with proper education and guidance.

How can you become Money smart?

Getting Money smart is not just about following some tricks and tips. It is about changing your thought process and taking necessary actions which will eventually make a difference in your life style. In order for that happen, you need to start out slowly and make the change. Fast is in’t always good, Slow and steady sustains longer helping you to win your financial goals.



1. Change your attitude slowly towards Money and start thinking towards Making extra, Spending wisely, Saving graciously and Managing Righthly.


2. Try to check out things on the arena of good money managment tips and techniques from various resources like internet, expert advice and more.


3. Reguarly read books and magazines on smart money strategies, savings ideas and get updated on new financial changes. I have recommended few books which I think are real good to start out.


4. Attend free seminar or workshops arranged by resources like libraries, banks and financial institutions. Filter the marketing information, only take what you really need.


5. Implement the ideas and strategies in you real life slowly by changing your current habits and taking actions.


6. Start teaching your kids once they are at age about money and cultivate the habit of saving.



Happy reading on getting Money Smart!!!


Posted in Financial Literacy, money really matters, Saving Tags: , , No Comments »
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Price Profiling – An Unknown Business Strategy

July 11th, 2008 Vijaianand

Few years back(2003), when I was living in an apartment complex owned by a property manager&companies(PMC). I was forced to renew the apartment lease every 6 months which was new to me moving from Boston. I came to know thats common in Houston area giving away a free ride to PMC to jack up the rent more frequently.




Many will agree obviously that is bad as tenants and shares my frustration. Most likely the rent will be increased 10% which PMC will be keen on instead of trying to retain the tenants. At the sametime they offered really good deals for the new tenants especially with free half month rents and cheaper rents to trap them.


When I enquired with the PMC folks asking them “what happened to old customer courtesy?”. We are your tenants already and don’t you like to give a good deal for us instead of jacking the rent compare to new guys. They would say, “NO, it won’t work like that way”. Once you are tenant, you don’t get any promotions and you are prone to increase in rent every renewal. They just don’t want bend.



There were lot of apartments near by so many tenants just took the pain of moving to different apartments every time they jack up the rent hoping to save some money in the long run. But some just stick with the same apartment not willing to take the pain of moving. This trend continous till today as I know from my friends who live in apartments. PMC people just don’t care about you these days, they just want to make money somehow.
 
At that time, I really didn’t understand it. Usually if you are customer with any business for sometime, they tend to show you some customer courtesy and appreciate being their customer for long by offering discounts to let you stay with them. I wasn’t really thrilled that time and so just moved on bought a home to avoid all this trouble.



I see same type of business strategy used in many businesses like Airlines, hotels, Events Tickets and other industries more in past years. I was wondering all about it and I am sure many of you might also thought about “why some of us has to be dirt cheap price and others end up paying Himalaya price”. I just thought its just the way of business until recently. I found the real answer for my unasked question in SmartMoney magazine. There was an article digging deep about this strategy. I just got to know the real essence of this tactics and wanted to share to you guys.


This common business strategy which is unknown to ordinary consumers is called “Price Optimization“. There is no more long time customer courtesy anymore, its all about how much many money a consumer should pay taking into account the current market condition, geographical location, local demand and lot more parameters with complicated calculation done by the computer software.


I know its getting interesting now. I have lot more information to share on this topic like “What other industries are starting to do ?, “How as consumer can try to escape or be on the otherside of the fence to take advantage of it” and much more with my realistic research in my next part. So stay tuned.



Have a good weekend folks…

Posted in Finance, Financial Literacy, money matter, News Tags: No Comments »
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Road trip Or Flying- Which is best at this High Gas Price?

June 8th, 2008 Vijaianand

Are you kidding? With high gas price making all time record numbers every day, are you about it?! This was the first question asked by my friend when I told him about my plan to go on a road trip to Chicago from Houston 3 weeks ago. That really didn’t stop me. I ended up going, more importantly for a week and made it thru the tough wave of gas prices in different states.


I know it is hard to think about budget friendly vacation these days with big shift in the tourism because of price increases in various aspects starting from flight tickets, boarding, lodging, car rentals, sight seeing tickets and not the least but the most important dinosuar level gas prices adding it all up to eat your wallet.



Many of you already cut down on your vacations just because of this very own reason. In this post, I am just going to share my real roadtrip experience by taking you all along for the ride and show how you can still have fun on roadtrips in cost effective way.


I. Plan





I know planning comes first before you ever start. I am not a neophyte for roadtrips. I have planned many of them and made memorable lines in my life chapter. At the same time, I also flew to many cities for vacations. Comparing them, I totally fell in love with driving on the American roads and anytime prefer to do roadtrips if I have lot of time in hand. This time I luckily got a week long time to kill in my hand. My wife just used this opportunity to bring up our month old topic of going to Chicago for my cousin wife’s baby shower.



1. Research At first I didn’t even blink my eye and gave thought about it because its only a week away and too less of time get a deal on flight tickets. I know its really hard to get reasonable price with the high gas price affecting this airlines too. It is a cockroach which is now everywhere and its going to be a tough task to get it out of the system for a while.



Anyway, I started pondering around my favorite last time resort websites, to see my luck on getting last min deals. First Orbitz.com to get a average fare per person for roundtrip. Then I went to my favorite site, Priceline and started bidding for flights with various different combination to see whether I atleast get a reasonable price 25% lessthan the round trip fare from orbitz. No luck, it all came out to be close $384/ person. Then I visited my other saved sites like Farecompare, Lastminute.com and Sidestep to compare the prices average at this time of the year. It seems to be no chance to getting lower than that one. Farecompare.com


After seeing that number, I remember my wife suggesting for a road trip as the final option since we have good amount of time in our hand. So I got to google maps to figure out the mileage for the road trip. Then I jumped to google search to see whether I can find a fuel gas calculator and compare with airline charges. I couldn’t find what I was looking but happen to hit on the AAA website to find how much will be gas expense.


FuelGasCalculator is the tool to find an aproximate estimation of gas expense for your trip by AAA. I was really amazed with the options like car model to determine average mileage. I typed all they wanted including to and from and details and got the gas expense for two way around $300. That is with an average 30miles per gallon for my Honda Accord. It is just almost 60% of savings just for travel.

Thats just for travel after taking high gas price into account. It doesn’t mean all other expense going to be cheap. So I took my research further asking few questions,


1. Is Road trip going to work out cheaper than Flying with hotel expense on the way?



2. Do I have enough time to drive to and fro and have time for sightseeing? Is it going to be relaxing one?



3. Can I take advantage of this road trip to spend a day or two on the way and see few more places?


I love to continue but it will get too long on this post. So let me answer these questions on the next one. Hold on for a bit to catch the more fun part..

Posted in Financial Literacy, Spending Tags: , No Comments »
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