Using Creativity to Make some Extra $$$

This is one of those WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THIS kinds of ideas…

If you have a cool concept or idea that you need to name, you can spend $99 to get tons of top ideas from people willing to brainstorm. The company then uses part of that $99 to pay out the people who submit the top 3 ideas.

NameThis is a cool concept, but also in perusing the results listed on the site, seems to be generating high quality value for the people using it. I’ve always been a bit boggled on how I can bring in any extra income that’s worth my time, but I think this might be it. The site is in beta and has been “making some changes” for awhile, so they be restructuring some aspects of the site. I look forward to checking back in the future…

Wigadoo my Spring Break, Please!

I love the idea of this website: Wigadoo is an online pledging site, only in the UK right now, although I think you can use some aspects from the US. The intent is essentially to reduce some of the risk of planning big (spendy) trips or outings with friends, because folks have pledged a certain amount to chip in, in advance. It also helps people think through the costs up front, so you don’t have the common phenomenon of folks signing up for plans only to reneg later when they realize they can’t really afford it. It really gets to the psychology of how people think about money, too – there’s not a moment I hate more than divvying up the restaurant check at the end of the evening. Because money is not a very friendly operation – it magnifies what’s mine, what’s yours, what I have, what you have (or don’t.) People like to reduce the process to absolute routine: plug this and pay that, no emotional wavering involved, or “I’ll get the appetizer ‘cause you spotted me money for parking two weeks ago.” It takes the emotional accounting out and turns it into just, accounting. I like that.

Giving for V-Day

For Valentine’s Day this year, I am going to propose to the Guy that instead of buying each other cheesy gifts, that we donate to a charity of our choice. I’ve donated to the Alzheimer’s Association in the past, and I’m considering that organization again. It might be nice to select an agricultural-based social enterprise start-up, since I’ve been reading a lot about those lately. So I started surfing around on charitynavigator.org and smartgivers.org – two great resources to evaluate where your dollars go furthest. My two additional honorable mentions are going to be FINCA International (a microlender dedicated to ending rural poverty) and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, both of which were rated very highly on Charity Navigator. Looking at these sites does make you think about what your giving principles are based on. I do believe in institutional fixes and organizations devoted to lasting change rather than band-aids or disaster-relief organizations (not that they don’t good work). But beyond that, I’m not sure if I know of any other great criteria for selection other than low administrative costs and the like. Does anyone have a more thoughtful process for who they allocate funds to for charitable giving?

Evaluating My Portfolio of Assets

So, I did it... I took the plunge and upped my automatic savings by another $100. I decided I would increase my cash-value life insurance contributions so that I can hopefully cover this no problem, even when I'm in grad school. I think I may even be able to do more... but I want to wait it out and see.

The one blessing of not having a lot of money in these times, as I told my advisor yesterday, is not having to worry so much about the right balance of your portfolio. When you only have a little teensy bit in the market, there’s just not that much nuance you can introduce. But for the future, I do want to re-evaluate my entire portfolio of assets and get a sober assessment of the right balance. I recently found a quick list of resources to help you do just that on your own.

Step 1: Break down all of your assets into three major categories; stocks, bonds and cash.
Step 2: Use Morningstar’s free Instant X-Ray tool (Morningstar.com/goto/instantxray) to display the assets in a pie chart.
Step 3: Decide your target allocation and shift from investments you’re overweighted in to those you’re light on.

Rinse and repeat annually. I think the categorization will be enlightening for me for instance, because often, even when I have my money in many different places, they all might fall into the same category.

Profile on Peer to Peer Lending in the Credit Crisis

In the special “Education Life” insert in the Sunday Times today there was an article on alternative ways to find money for college “Loans in the Time of Facebook”. It sounds remarkably appealing, but I’m less familiar with “social” or “Peer to Peer Lending” as it’s called, so I checked out a few of the sites advertised.

Virginmoneyus.com: Manages money between family and friends. If I were so lucky, this would be a great way to authenticate a loan through a third-party site.

Fynanz.com: Peer to Peer lending with a 5% bonus for lenders. You can search by school or state as well so you can see where other students are seeking to borrow.

GreenNote.com: This was the most inspiring of the sites in my opinion. Positioned as receiving a loan from someone who believes in you. Low 6.8% Fixed Rate

Prosper.com: The most established of the PTP lending resources I’ve found with the tagline “Let’s Bank on Each Other.” Similar, personal interst small loans.

It seemed that the fundamental problem highlighted in the article about all of these sites were that there are quite obviously too many interested borrowers and not enough lenders. For me, too, I think it’s just the uncertainty in the market, but I guess I would be a little skittish using these less-established resources… of course, we’ll see how the loan process goes for me, and I may be reinvestigating.

Weekend Reflections from LA

Just had a fantastic weekend with a friend from school who was in from LA. We had a lovely time, really great fireworks display on Saturday night, a night out downtown at an open-bar sponsored by the MBA association. A day out on the boat, skiing and tubing (my arms are so sore, it hurts to squeeze my toothpaste now). And questionably great conversation: the nuances of how to order frozen custard recipes off the menu, our theory on how Bush created reality TV (“No Stupid Star Left Behind”), and what makes a good parody movie (I can tell you it’s not Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story). And at brunch Sunday morning we also talked about my blogging. We had a nice discussion of standards of life in various cities and where you get to make choices, and where you just have to cope. My LA friend pays $1400 rent for a 1BR similar to mine in Santa Monica (I pay $950 living thisclose to the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis – the Manhattan of the Midwest). Looking at living anywhere other than I live now is going to be a reality check. (Sidenote: this was a nice instruction manual on predicting exactly how much more or less expensive your new city will be, from Punny.org)

My LA friend also posed the question as to what percent of my gross income I save. She reports saving 10% of her gross income. I wasn’t really sure offhand, so of course I had to come back and calc’ up a lot of different percentages – when I do total it all up, I found that I am saving about 15% of my takeaway pay (after taxes, 401(k), healthcare deductions etc). That doesn’t feel bad, but knowing that she saves 10% of her gross is probably a bigger number. AND she lives in a more expensive place. So that is rejuvenating me to try to ramp this up. For August I’m already planning on 16% and I think my goal will be to reach 19% by the end of this calendar year.

Also, thanks to Ellen from Wormbook for pointing out that the resource I was looking for in my last post is actually called Buxfer!

Bucks for / fer / phor?

Help! This weekend I heard some friends talking about “bucks – fur” (my phonetic rendering of what it sounds like they were saying), a website that helps roommates, sig others and friends tidily divide up what each owes towards certain shared expenses. This would be an online forum where you enter in who buys the milk and bread the most in a shared living environment and end up at a more “even” total of who owes what. Not that I want to micromanage yet another element of my financial life with the Guy, but it might be nice to try out instead of doing the mental tally.

Has anyone heard of this site and can anyone share the actual web address? My initial searches have turned up empty.

I Heart NY & Mapquest for Public Transportation

So, returned late last night from a really fun weekend in New York! Out visiting friends, checking out grad school and exploring a future home(?) It was just so good to be back on the East coast. I got to see so many old friends, had more people to meet up with and plans made than I had time for in four days, was surrounded by fashion and literature and Starbucks and intellectual goings-on. Just too good. A bit exhausting though. The Guy made a comment that the more he comes back, the less he likes New York as a visitor. You’re always trying to cram everything in when you’re a visitor, so it ends up being so tiring and too much. Even after four stretched days though, I could understand how it made him so happy to live there. And I could see myself there too.

And even though it is an insanely expensive city, and you do end up taking cabs more than you think you will, I kept my transportation spending down thanks to this fabulous website: Hopstop.com. The site is essentially Mapquest for public transportation, letting you map out the best route across the city, which train or bus to take, which way to turn on the street, how long it’s going to take to walk a few blocks, etc. I planned out my trip to the T, with everywhere I wanted to go while I was solo and didn’t have a native New Yorker with me. I jotted everything down in my Moleskine, which I *think* was subtle enough to keep me from looking like a tourist! They only have a few major cities rolled out, but really helpful for those that do.

Cool Sites I Read Not Related to Personal Finance

So one of the reasons I write this blog is to maintain a connection to the outside of my daily work grind and as a reminder that I am more whole than my daily schedule / calendar of events would suggest. Thus, as an FYI to those who only read this blog and don’t know the rest, I thought I would post about some of the other interests that I spend time reading, learning and thinking about outside both 1) my daily work grind and 2) my personal finance struggle.

Chocolate & Zucchini
This is a food blog written by a Frenchwoman, Clotilde, who has now made herself into quite an enterprise. I think this is a really innovative and different blog that tends to veer outside of the equation of topical blogs in general. You get the flavor of passion for food without it seeming one-dimensional. Plus I love the idea of blogging as a way to improve one’s language skills (English is Clotilde’s second language). Just wish it was updated more often. Sidenote: I have made chocolate & zucchini muffins before and they are outstanding. You can’t taste the green stuff but it makes chocolate chip muffins more moist and more nutritious.

TPM Café
I am really into following the minutia of politics. I have finally allowed myself to give up any political ambitions of my own. But I am still very engaged with all of the every last detail. I like the TPM blog for its speed and its randomness. All of the bloggers are very real, personal-sounding people (including one guy in particular, who happens to be a friend I graduated from college with).

Brand Camp
“Brand Camp" is a blog written on marketing and brand management (my day job) by Tom Fishburne, who works for Method. (you know, the soaps and cleaning products they sell at Target). These little postcard cartoons he does remind me of all of the reasons I am sometimes engaged by my work, and sometimes want to slide down the sidepost of the corporate ladder altogether.

Woot.com
Some would say this IS in fact related to personal finance since there are good deals here featured everyday. But I don’t tend to think this way. I think any sort of enticement towards spending on things you don’t need is not so good. But it's fun to look, and I find myself looking often. I like the concept of the updated-every-day site.

In Honor of International Women's Day?

Apparently today is International Women’s Day. Honestly. Who makes this stuff up? But in the spirit of this made-up holiday and women supporting women, I’ll try to post about a couple different resources specific to women for getting more financially savvy.

*On My Own Two Feet:
A pretty shallow resource, dedicated to promoting the book of the same title, but the links page was really helpful and I discovered a great new resource for various financial calculators… pretty perfect if you’re a personal finance nerd.

*85 Broads:
More of a career-focused website for women in business, 85 Broads was originally launched by Janet Hanson as a networking group for women at Goldman Sachs. (Goldman Sachs is located at 85 Broad Street, aren’t we punny?) It’s a membership type site you can join, but the blog’s nice, too. For me, a window into another world or a deeper view of what my world could be: https://secure.85broads.com/public/blog/4426

*Suze Orman
When I first started this blog, I caught Suze on CNN. I sense, without having confirmation from other bloggers, that she might be a controversial poster woman for personal finance. I like her, though. Despite other shock jock type characters, she seems compassionate. Plus, we share the whole Suze / Suzy thing.

*Ms Money: And her Blog:
This was a very succinct, visually-appealing site. And it has a no-nonsense way of conveying the real issues of women’s personal finance, without sounding condescending:
Women's long-term financial needs are different from men's because they earn 25% less, average 11 years out of the workforce, and live 5 years longer. Women need unique saving and investing strategies if they want to retire in style.

*Women’s Finance
Less glam of a site, no frills, but helpful link nonetheless.

*Women’s Personal Finance
This seemed like a nice “by women, for women” blog, and I’ll especially highlight a nice “introduction entry” about “What I wish my Mother had told me.

Feel free to add your own fave links in the comments....