Do you know someone that’s a “yes” person? Someone that’s always saying yes to other people until they are completely exhausted? Most likely, if you’re reading this, that person is you. On the other hand have you ever known someone that’s a “no” person and everyone around them is afraid to ask for anything. In life it’s probably best to have a happy medium in this area and give what you can (when you can) and say no before you hit your breaking point. Saying yes to someone feels good and saying no feels bad. This behavior is wired deep into our brains and we hate telling anyone no. But what about personal finances? Well, we’ve been trained as consumers to say yes to everything. Would you like a mortgage? Yes, please. Student debt? Don’t mind if I do. New car? Absolutely. Consumer debt? Oh yeah. Shinny new iGizmo? Heck yes! Popular culture hates people that say no to all these financial traps. People that say no are labeled misers, penny pinchers, tightwads, and usually considered crazy to some degree. When everyone is drinking the kool-aid it’s easy to make fun of people that don’t have a goofy kool-aid mustache. But we know better. Being laughed at by people with dysfunctional brain wiring doesn’t seem so bad, especially in the long run.

Saying no takes courage and vision. Living in a house you can afford and driving a car that’s paid for isn’t glamorous. But either is feeding a fat little monkey on your back until your 70 and putting off retirement indefinitely (that fat little monkey is interest by the way).

Saying no means you’re in control. Instead of living paycheck to paycheck you control your money instead of your money controlling you.

Saying no means you stand out as a target for ridicule and as an inspiration to others. The more radical your actions the more people get nervous. They like the idea of them having everything equal as everyone else and acting differently means you’ve changed the rules and they can’t judge you easily, which makes them feel threatened.

Saying no means you get to spend your retirement doing things you love and doing it when you’re still young.

So dash that kool-aid to the floor and say no to senseless spending and mindless consumption.

I’ve had my perkstreet rewards card for almost a year and I really like it.  It has all the features you’re used to with a standard credit card or debit check card but with one key difference…they huge 1-2% cashback rewards for using the card.  The standard rate is 1% but if you maintain $5,000 in the account they will bump your rewards up to 2% on everything.

A 1% reward on everything you purchase is pretty rare in even the best credit cards.  Most of the times those cards will have specific categories you’ll get 1% but most of the time you get a substandard rate.

5% cashback rewards are also fairly common for certain purchases during certain times of year but the 1% isn’t adversly affected by this change.

Signing Up
Perkstreets’ online application is pretty easy and straight forward.  They use secure encrypted data transfer when you set up your account and they’ve tried to make it as simple as possible. The only downside to setting up and account is sending back a signature card via snail mail.  A signature is required for everyone on the account that wants to use the card.

Things to Remember
With any debit reward card you need to run the transaction as a credit card, making sure not to use your debit PIN.  Most stores will automatically try to run the card as debit. You need to get int he habit of pushing ‘cancel’ when the PIN prompt comes up on the screen.  You will then be able to run the card as credit.  The other option is to tell the merchant ‘credit’ when they ask credit or debit.

Advantages

• Great perks and cashback (the best anywhere).
• No credit card debt or interest fees
• Won’t allow things to go through if you run out of money on the account (they just deny the purchase instead of charging you heinous fees for the pack of gum you bought)
• No fees on minimum balance, or using your card.
• Introductory rate of 2% for the first 3 months
• Special cashback offers with up to 5% cashback
• Perks for music, coffee, and other areas
• Get the same protection from fraudulent charges like you would with a standard credit card.

Drawbacks

• Customer service seems to be a problem for some people.  When I called they seemed helpful but didn’t actually do what I needed them to do (they never got the signature card I sent them and when I requested another one they didn’t send it, I’ll call again).

• It’s difficult to add a new person to the card – After getting the card I wanted to add my wife but perkstreet’s customer service said she could use the card (by sending back a signature card) but the name on the card would only be my name.  Due to lax security and the debit option on the card my wife wouldn’t be completely stranded.
• They don’t support business expenses and will shut down your account if you’re using it for business.

According to the New York Times now is the first time in 30 years the median mortgage payment is equal to the median rent payment.  This can be seen as a good time to buy or a good time to pick up an investment property as the housing market has gone through a major correction over the past few years.

While lending rates are historically low, buying a house is harder because there are higher lending standards, 20% down payments are required, and your income to debt ratio needs to be fairly high to qualify.  Those buyers that want a house (and can qualify) have already bought a house most likely.

There are a few different forces at work here: historically low interest rates, the fallout of the housing market (including mass foreclosures), and the increase of rent payments.  Some parts of the country have had lower mortgage payments than rent for quite some time. Taxes, maintenance, and insurance are part of owning a home but those costs are passed on in higher rent payment to renters.

Source

This is interesting but it doesn’t tell the whole story.  Maybe in a future post we could research jobs by country per capita.  North Korea has one of the highest military jobs per capita in the world.  Much of where a countries jobs come from would be based on their exports and what they specialize in.

In the debate about were jobs come from know how most countries employ their citizens could provide some valuable information.

This handy tip helps you get books on your Kindle gratis/free of charge.  These aren’t public domain books that are 200 years old either.  You can get New York Times best selling books downloaded to your Kindle through your local library.

The Kindle (or eBook) service in which library patrons ‘check out’ books from the library for a limited time, has spread to nearly 12,000 libraries across the United States.   When you check out a book from a library that supports Kindle book downloads you have some of the same limitation that you would see with traditional libraries (e.g. you may have to wait for more popular titles).   Just like a standard library you can’t checkout all their books indefinitely.  But the convenience of instant digital downloads is something new and very exciting for avid book readers.

If you don’t own a Kindle don’t worry, there are a number of free Kindle reader programs you can get online.  In fact, this program even supports the EPUB format for smartphone and ipad readers.

The digital book provider used by Amazon is Overdrive.com.

Searching for an downloading books is fast and easy using their site.  Once you find a title you want Overdrive.com will guide you to local libraries that would provide a download.  You may need to get a library card to use the service but its worth it.

Oomas come in all shapes and sizes.

See All the Ooma Products

I’m a big VoIP fan and haven’t paid a regular phone bill in four years or more. If you’re wanting to save money on your phone bill and have free long distance you should really consider VOIP (or Voice Over IP) services. I’ve tried every VoIP service from MagicJack, to Vonage, to Skype. After trying out each of those services I can confidently say Ooma takes the cake for many reasons.

If you’re new to VoIP services or are just looking around you’ll want to keep a couple things in mind. First is reliability and second is cost.

The best VoIP services are directly tied to your router, not your computer.
Some of the cheapest services (e.g. MagicJack and Skype) are computer based.   What this means is that your computer has to be on, all the time, for you to receive phone calls.  For out going calls this wasn’t really a problem for our family.   The problem with computer based VOIP is the incoming calls.  People call at random times and the computer will be off or something will have happened to the software or hardware to have the call go through.  It was kind of nice not having people call me for a while.  If it was really important they would call my cell or email me.  The computer based software just wasn’t dependable like router based software.  Router based software is where the hardware runs directly from your router and doesn’t need a computer to operate.  Reliability is much better and is always on no matter what happens to your fickle computers.

The best VoIP services only charge you ONCE and don’t have a recurring bill.
Now that we’ve established that router based services are best it’s time to separate the services in this field again.  There are two types of VOIP services that run through your router.  The first charges every you every month and requires a credit card to bill from.  These cost around $20-$30 a month.  The OOMA on the other hand only has one cost for buying the hardware up front (you can pick up Ooma Units on Amazon and get free shipping too!).

Ooma Units just work, right of the box.
Setting up my unit was very easy.  Basically plug it in to my router, plug in my phones, and start making calls.  I needed to go online to get my phone number established but the information provided in the box (and on their) website was clear as could be and didn’t require any thinking (which is a good thing when you’re trying something new).

Things to remember
No matter what service you use (except MagicJack or Skype, since they’re computer based) you’ll still need to pay the $3-$5 each month in government fees (state and federal tax for having a phone line).  This fee varies by area and state but it’s still not too bad.  Ooma will still need to have a credit card on file to bill you for these taxes each month.  But you’ll be paying these no matter what router based VoIP service you use.

Recommendation
I would highly recommend Ooma to anyone wanting a reliable, low cost, phone service.  I’ve been using mine for a while now and I honestly can say it’s the best option out there (until they find a way to make and receive calls from your Android or iPhone over Wi-fi for free).

1. They are linked up directly to your router (so you don’t need to have a computer on continually).
2. They don’t have a recurring annual or monthly fee (with exception of the Federal and State fees which is around $5.00/Month.  There is no getting away from that.)
3. There is a one time hardware purchase fee with NOTHING to buy ever again.
4. It works with your regular phone.
5. It’s easy to setup and the sound quality is excellent.
6. They can “Port” your existing phone number (for $40 or so) but they also provide a free number with any setup.
7. A bundle of other services like call waiting, caller ID, web portal, phone number blocking,

First consider the cost of food and luxuries like appliances. A mere hundred years ago nobody had a fridge. It took nearly forty years for everyone in the United States to get electricity and with every new invention adoption rates become much shorter. These appliances are luxuries that are easy to take for granted.

Looking at the chart below really shows the ease of adoption (through lower cost and excess supply) for major technological breakthroughs.  Their are very few items that the rich enjoy that the poor don’t also take part in.  Moving to an information age has made everyone richer.

With these rates of adoption the gap between the rich and poor is becoming nearly non existent. Almost all parts of the economic spectrum enjoy luxuries like cell phones, computers, and the internet. Source

Because infographics are so cool this graphic is also being included.

The fact that a refrigerator costs the same as eight meals for a family of four really puts into perspective the low cost of these items.  Think about all the components and technology included in a fridge you can buy off craigslist.

It’s popular to bash the rich but that’s a little too simplistic (some call this form of attacks a form of prejudice, because you can’t just paint everyone with the same broad brush).    It’s important to distinguish between the justly rich and the unjustly rich.  The unjustly rich have inherited their riches from their daddy and think they’ve achieved something (Warren Buffett thinks inheriting large sums of money is nothing less than welfare, since the person receiving the money didn’t earn it themselves).  The unjustly rich also get rich from exploiting government bail outs and protectionism provided them from said government.  The justly rich however improve everyone’s lives.  They bring down the cost of goods, provide innovative products, and solve problems in peoples’ lives.  The justly rich should be celebrated to a level just under the founding fathers (almost sounds blasphemous considering how often the rich are vilified).    The point of this being, without the justly rich improving our lives we couldn’t share in the bounty that is our modern lives.

This graph from the book The Haves and the Have-Nots (review) shows the percent of world income is shown on the Y axis and the ventile of each country are graphed on the X axis.  A ventile is the total population of each country divided into 20 equally-sized groups.  They are then ranked by household per-capita income.  What it shows is that the poorest of Americans (with average annual income of $6,800) are richer than 68% of the world (many of which live off less than $1 a day).    The flatter the line the less inequality there is in that country.  Brazil has the biggest discrepancy between their ultra poor and wealth citizens.  One surprising result from this is that America’s poorest poor are richer than India’s richest rich (as a group).  Within India’s richest there as a vast difference between the super rich and the relatively rich for that country).

While your neighbors new large home or new boat might make you feel poor take solace in the fact you live like a king compared to the rest of the world.

When it comes to health there are billions of dollars wasted on ‘snake oil’ cures. As much as I dislike people selling placebos or snake oil to get rich there’s plenty of room for real remedies and supplements that actually work. Many of these supplements are a fraction of the cost of prescription medication and they don’t have the same types side effects. More testing is needed but intuitively these natural supplements don’t cause the extended harm on other bodily functions/organs as prescription medication. My wife is on daily Prednisone for lupus and she can look forward to cataracts and a number of other nasty side effects from extended use.

There was an episode on MythBusters regarding nausea from sea sickness that always stuck with me. In that episode Grant Imahara was the most susceptible to motion sickness (he vomited multiple times trying different natural remedies). After trying everything one thing actually worked, and worked well. By taking a ginger supplement he was able to ride the motion sickness machine for an extended period of time with no ill side effects. This was a real breakthrough for me mentally since non-traditional medicine is treated like snake oil by most of the public and definitely by medical professionals. Maybe there was a middle ground to this debate over natural drugs vs prescription drugs.

The inherent problem with natural supplements is the fact that no one (read company) is willing to fund clinical trials for herbs or other vitamins. With no way to patent the common supplement there is no incentive to fork out the expensive testing. I don’t blame them for this, it’s just the way the system is.

Click on the image below to see the full version:

The Supplements that Top the List for effectiveness are:
*Click on the name of the supplement to get it on Amazon

• Folic Acid: Helps prevent certain birth defects (like spinal bifida). It’s recommended to take a prenatal vitamin the entire time in your life you may get pregnant so your body has folic acid reserves ready for the developing baby.
• Green Tea For the regulation of cholesterol. Green tea has other benefits as well but the most evidence supports it’s role in reducing cholesterol.  Heart health, cognition, cancer.
• Probiotics – Helps with digestive health and IBS.
• Vitamin D – General health, cancer prevention, heart health, .
• Selenium – Relief from Chemo Therapy Effects
• Cranberry Pills – Urinary System Health
• Omega 3 – High Blood Pressure, Secondary Heart Disease
• Licorice Root – Coughs
• Olive Leaf Extract – High Blood Pressure, anti-viral,
• Red Yeast Rice – Blood Pressure, Heart Health
• St. John’s Wort – Helps with depression
• Valerian Root – Anxiety and Sleep Aid
• Omega 6 – Heart Health
• NAC – Mental Health
• Reishi Mushroom – Immune System
• Peppermint Oil – IBS, Digestion
• Hawthorn Berry – Blood Pressure
• Cocoa – Blood Pressure, Heart Health
• Cinnamon – Type II diabetes, regulates blood sugar.
• Devil’s Claw – Pain Relief
• Creatine – Cognition
• Calcium – Colorectal Cancer
• Zinc – Cold Prevention, Improves Immune System, and Anti-Inflammatory for Asthmatics. Zinc has an important role in cell-mediated immune functions and also functions as antiinflammatory and antioxidant agent. IL-2 production (Th(1) cytokine) increases, this leads to increases in activities of natural-killer cell and T cytolytic cells, which are involved in killing viruses, bacteria, and tumor cells
• Ginger – Motion Sickness and Nausea
• Peppermint Oil – IBS
• Tyrosine – Improves alertness, wakefulness, and memory.
• Krill Oil – Management of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and pain during menstruation that interferes with daily activities.
• Beta Glucan – Results suggest that LNT in combination with anticancer drugs prolong the survival time of patients with advanced gastric and colorectal cancer.
• Aloe Vera Pills – Oral administration of aloe vera might be a useful adjunct for lowering blood glucose in diabetic patients as well as for reducing blood lipid levels in patients with hyperlipidaemia.

The last year or two with Netflix has been great. Instant streaming on our Wii has been awesome for kid shows, movies, and tv episodes. But Netfilx’s recent price increase have got me wondering what else is out there. As far as traditional DVD by mail services Netflix is still better in price and availability of titles. But the streaming has some decent competition with Amazon Prime and Hulu.

When Amazon Prime was announced they only had 5,000 titles available for instant streaming (compared to Netflix’s 20,000). Amazon recently announced another 2,000 titles available bringing their total to 8,000. Now this isn’t as impressive as Netflix’s 20K, but even at 20K Netflix had a large number of videos that weren’t available for instant streaming (but they still had more than I could ever watch).

Benefits to Amazon Prime

• Low cost – at only $79 a year (with the huge bonus of free 2nd day shipping on all Amazon orders)
• Access to rent 80,000 shows and movies at a pay per view prices instead of Netflix one DVD at a time
• New streaming device will work for Amazon, TED, and Hulu (thus making up for lack of selection).
• As Netflix signs new deals they open the way for Amazon (a cash machine) to buy the same contracts with Netflix doing all the work.

Downsides to Amazon Prime

• Limited on their device support (Currently no XBOX, Boxee, Tivo, Wii, Smartphongs, or others)
• Limited Titles (Less than half of the title’s Netflix supports and there are rumors Amazon is counting each episode of a tv show as a title, thus inflating their true title count)
• User interface isn’t as good as Netfilx. No movie queues. No recommended movies.

Bridging the Gap… ROKU
In order to make the switch I’ll need to get a new supported device.. the ROKU (see details). This will allow me to stream movies and tv shows from Amazon Prime straight to my TV. It also supports a large number of free and paid tv and internet radio services (like Pandora).

The Final Call
Writing this review made me a little less sure about making the switch.  The up front cost of 158 ($79 for Prime and $79 for the Roku box) could be a costly experiment and I could end up staying with Netflix once I see first hand what Prime is like.  On the other hand it’s not a total loss because I’ll get 2nd shipping from Amazon and we’ll have another TV with instant streaming.

So maybe everything isn’t as cut and dry as I first thought.

Everyone make impulse purchases but new research indicates the closer your last name is to Z the quicker you’ll make a buying decision. The “Last Name Effect” is likely a result of all the times children with the last name, like Zeeman, had to wait at the end of the line for lunch, recess, and other school activities. As a result of being last in line their whole childhood lives they tend to jump on opportunities quicker than someone else who were always first in line.

If you do have a last name closer to the end of the alphabet beware of ‘limited time offers’ and ‘limited quantity’ gimmicks.