Monthly Archives: December 2008

Blogs, Books, and Tools For Money Management

Posted on by
Reply

The majority of what I’ve learned about managing my finances I have learned in the past few months. I’m going to list some of the major sources that I have used and are solid sources of personal finance information. So I’ll list some blogs that are good for this, some of my favorite books on the subject, and some sites that can help you manage it.

Blogs -

Get Rich Slowly – This is the best blog on personal finance that I have found. J.D. goes over so many different topics and various projects  that this is one of the biggest repositories for personal finance tips, tricks, and information.

Wise Bread – This blog is written by multiple people so there isn’t the same connection as with J.D. The topics can range widely from the writer’s experience and the quality is sometimes lacking. Good information it’s Lifehacker for finance.

Books -

The Richest Man in Babylon – This book is astoundingly in how simple it is too understand and it’s approach of using a story to achieve an osmotic effect with it’s information and your mind. It teaches multiple lessons in how to handle your finances while also having an underpinning in humility. A great read and also a classic from the 1920′s

Rich Dad, Poor Dad – This isn’t necessarily dedicated towards personal finance so much as street wise thinking on finance. This book isn’t to be taken literally but it does off plenty of good advice for business, and investing outside of the stock market. It makes it on the list because of these facts.

Hackers and Painters – I recommend this book not in it’s entirety, but for one essay that is contained within. You can read this essay entitled “How to Make Wealth” at Paul Graham’s website. A much different approach than what we have been ingrained with.

Tools -

Mint - My personal web tool to help chart my monetary flow. I find it fitting for my lifestyle in that it is simple, it easily connects, and implements multiple security measures. Pluses, SMS, nice tagging feature, allows you to break down bills into their subsequent parts, and handles almost any form of monetary trade, from checking, credit cards, and savings to stocks and loans.

Wesabe – This in the personal finance blogging arena comes out on top. It has community support, allows your to set goals, and update manually to keep it balanced. * I had issues with it miscalculating my credit card and telling me I had $245 on the black rather than $70 in the red so it was screwing the debit/credit balance of by $300 .

Geezeo – Another community connected online management tool. This comes out on top in the user happiness it seems. As far as I can tell, it lets you do what the other two do but it seems to be a more complete package haven’t actually used this but I may look into it.

Spreadsheets – Nothing like handling all the pertinent details yourself. Though this isn’t as easy as the others and will take some time out of your day I would at least recommend knowing how to do this either by hand or using software such as Excel, Quicken, Google Spreadsheets, etc.

Owning Your Brand

Posted on by
Reply

Had a discussion on Twitter over how much you would pay for your brand and the reasons why you would want to own it. Today, with the internet everyone can own his/her brand, but with the brand comes the brand identity across the board which you might not be able to capitalize on if someone else already has it. Now it’s important to possess your name across the major urls and also across the major social media spectrum. There are 4 major reasons that you would want to own your brand across the board.

1. Easy to Find: Sharing an unanimous identity across the spectrum means that people only need to know that one aspect to find you on their favorite service. This makes it easier for you to not ostracize your followers by not being where they feel comfortable.

2. Reputation Proceeds You: If someone knows you from another service it will make it easier for you to gain following as you enter a new service. You also will have a beacon set up for when followers from another service come looking for you.

3. Protection From Miscreants: This is probably one of the big ones in this day and age. If someone shares the name with you and they do something that could only be viewed in a negative light; they are going to hurt your brand.

4. Multiple Connection Points: You can connect with people on multiple fronts in a multitude of ways. This provides heightened connectivity with those around you. Allows you to create deeper relationships that connecting on only one front.

5 Life Lessons You Can Learn From Poker

Posted on by
1

I used to play a lot of poker, but I quit while I was trying to bring my grades back up and also had a long streak of losses. Recently, I began playing about 2-3 games a week just for fun and realized that a lot of what I’ve learned about business, entrepreneurship, and finance are key to the game. You don’t have to play poker to understand these principles that make it easier to be a winner in life and on the felt.

  1. Bankroll Management:This is definitely one of the largest keys to the game of poker, making sure you can still be in the game when your opportunity arises. The concept is that your allowing yourself to achieve the maximum value at the lowest risk possible. If your good at managing your stack you can take a small stack and still come out on top, do the same with your skills, talents, and money and you will can build a great life. This is the foundation that you build off of.
  2. Aggressively Take Chances: The more you risk in the early stages the easier it will be to recoup losses or exploit your massive advantage in mid- and late-game. This becomes especially true if you are good at managing your bankroll.
  3. Know When to Back Down: The corollary to number 2, being aggressive can put your in a winning position in most situations, but if you get cocky you might end up losing everything. You may scare away the source of your income. It’s up to you to toss a few hands, either due to the fact that your hand sucks or just to provide an incorrect position to your competition.
  4. Opportunities are not Rare: Yes, this may not be 100 percent true in life; it is in poker though.  Every hand your dealt is an opportunity to advance, in life you have probably on average one opportunity every day. The problem is that most people don’t have the skills to see opportunities in their peripheral, only the obvious ones that stand out right in front of them.
  5. Luck is a Factor: Every person is dealt a different starting hand, sometimes you will be beat before you ever see your hand. The only thing that you can do is try to take advantage of what you’ve been giving.