Monday, August 20, 2007

The Stock Market for Twenty-Somethings

This great article from the Daily Star talks about how Wallstrip.com is bringing the ever-so-exciting world of stocks and bonds to the younger generation -- sort of like YouTube meets Dilbert. Check out a sample below:


And, from Web Site Adds Zest to Investing (AZ Daily Star):

Indeed, Wallstrip has been described as the investing equivalent of YouTube — it's where stock culture meets pop culture. It's part of a new wave of social investment Web sites that feature blogging, videos and insights into the stock market aimed squarely at teenagers and the 20-something generation.

Launched in late 2006, Wallstrip has about 20,000 daily visitors and is growing, said Howard Lindzon, a venture capitalist who developed the site. A recent online skit featuring an actor mimicking James Cramer, a CNBC talk show host, garnered about 30,000 hits, making it Wallstrip's most popular feature.

No wonder Wallstrip caught the eye of CBS Interactive, which purchased it this spring for an undisclosed sum.

What's Wallstrip's appeal? "Simply, less is more," said Lindzon. "It's just a One-a-Day Vitamin approach."

While Lindzon directs the content, the real star is Lindsay Campbell, an actress turned host of a daily three-to-five-minute video chat that examines a top-performing stock, sometimes with a dose of campy humor.

Monday, August 13, 2007

When Money Means Too Much

It saddened me greatly to read this article in the New York Times about the head of a Chinese Toy Company, who purportedly committed suicide after it was discovered that his company had used leaded paint for toys sold through Mattel in the U.S.

Two things stand out to me. First, that the company that provided the paint was run by a friend, and they provided this man's company with fake samples. We don't know if he knew this or not, yet we do know he felt responsible enough that he killed himself.Second, we are not recognizing the underlying message here -- that the drive to produce the cheapest products possible for Mattel not only has potentially poisoned millions of children, but has now cost the life of a businessman thousands of miles away.

What strikes me right now, as I prepare for us to move, is that these cheap toys - the ones this man died for - are the bane of my life. They complicate it, get under my feet, clutter my house, and - my son, their owner - he hardly even notices them. I have told him he may not get one more toy until we get rid of over half of what is in his room. I don't mean to say he doesn't enjoy his toys -- he is very attached to a certain pirate hat and a penguin backpack at the moment -- it is just that he has so much. Every time we go to a fast food restaurant, he gets a toy. I swear they multiply in his room at night. They overflow his toybox, and thanks to Toy Story, he refuses to throw them in the garbage. And really, he only plays with maybe a tenth of what he has.

I'm reading a book called Clutter's Last Stand -- It's Time to De-Junk Your Life! and I like the part where it states that things = time worked. Not only must we work to obtain the thing, but you must work to maintain it, clean it, put it away, etc., etc., and every time I look at something, I really think about what it costs. Things not only break us, make us poor, ruin our credit and complicate our life, but they make us prisoners.

And now someone has died for toys, for little, plastic things. When will we get perspective on this, and start valuing what really matters?

SHANGHAI, Aug. 13 — The head of a Chinese company that was behind the recall earlier this month of more than a million Mattel toys committed suicide over the weekend, China’s state-controlled media reported today.

Zhang Shuhong, a Hong Kong businessman and owner of the Lee Der Industrial Company, a company that made toys for Mattel for 15 years, hanged himself in a company warehouse in Foshan, in southern China, the Southern Metropolis Daily said today.

There was no independent confirmation of the suicide. A person who answered the phone at Lee Der’s office in Foshan City, near Guangzhou, immediately hung up.

A spokeswoman for Mattel, which is based in El Segundo, Calif., released a statement this morning that said “We were saddened to learn of this tragic news.”

The death is the latest development in a year filled with prominent recalls and product safety scandals involving goods that were made in China.

Mattel, which makes Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, recalled more than a million toys worldwide after discovering that they were coated with lead paint. The recall was one of the largest this year and included 83 types of toys, including Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer characters made under the Fisher-Price brand and sold worldwide.

A string of troubling recalls of Chinese-made products this year has heightened trade tensions between the United States and China and created a public relations disaster for China, whose economy and trade surpluses are growing at a blistering pace.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

So, think you're digging yourself a hole, too?

For anyone who might wonder, after my last post, whether or not they are making any money as a second income earner, MSN Money has this great calculator that spells it out for you (you need to know how much you paid in taxes.) It calculates taxes, childcare, entertainment/food and other sundry expenses. According to the calculator, I made $4,970 a year working part-time. Because our situation is unique, in that we make money when we both go to school, the calculator does not factor that in, but quick addition shows $14,595 (what we'll save on student loan payments plus the GI bill) minus $4,970 still means an increase of $9,625 a year. This is a slightly different number than the one below, because I calculated the taxes myself in the previous post, and this time the MSN calculator did it for me. Regardless, we are increasing our income between $9K and $10K by me being home. Of course, that means I have to cook more meals at home and use fewer services or that money will quickly be eaten up. In short, we have to change our lifestyle. But I think we can do it, and I see this as an opportunity to save and payoff bills after the debacle of trying to sell our home this summer.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

How working cost me more money than staying home

Recently I posted that I quit my job, and that I am actually making more money staying at home with my children than I did working. This is true. At first, we thought I made a little, but once we really examined the numbers, we realized we were losing hundreds of dollars a month for me to work at a job I could not go any further in and that I did not particularly enjoy. Here is the breakdown for that decision and an explanation of the variations:

My net pay working part-time: $1015
Minus...
The increase in taxes because of the extra income: $300
The cost of part-time preschool for one child: $290
The cost of gas, lunches, dry cleaning, etc., for work: $75-125

Additional considerations:
The additional student loans because my husband had to quit school (that would otherwise be deferred): $125
The student loans I must pay because I had to quit school: $360

Total not including student loans: $715. Subtract this from $1015 and I get a $300 monthly paycheck, which means I actually made $3.75/hour -- far below minimum wage. This is one way to examine our finances, with me bringing home a few hundred dollars extra money a month, but it is a near-sighted view and doesn't include all the data.

If you include the student loan payments, which will now be deferred (interest paid by the government) it means we will actually make $185 more a month with me not working. Add to that the $975 he will get from his GI bill for going back to school, and we not only break even with me staying home, we bring home a whopping extra $1160 a month -- $145 more than I brought home in the first place, without any of the expenses or even taxes! This is a direct increase of $9,280 a year to our take-home pay without an increase in our tax bracket (we do not receive the GI bill in the summer).

By me quitting my job, we will both be able to finish our degrees and then move into better jobs. I could not move up the ladder any more without a master's degree. My husband is still 45 credits away from his bachelor's degree in computer science, which will set him up for jobs making as much as double his annual salary now. Although many of my feminist friends were understandably upset that I left the workforce, it was a no-brainer for us financially. Our school is free, since my husband works at the university, we get the additional money from his GI bill, AND I can actually spend time with my very young children. Leave the workforce indeed! I have never made a smarter financial decision.

Want to know what drives women from careers? Reality. I can stay home with my children and make more money than I would have working. The numbers are real; this is real life. Feminist movement, please take note -- you want women in the workforce? Fix it, and we'll come back.

Monday, August 6, 2007

Duh -- Japanese Women Discriminated Against in the Workforce

In this article about Japanese women in the workforce, they finally get it right -- there are two kinds of discrimination, active and passive. The active kind is where women are simply looked over or set aside for promotions; the passive kind is where employees who leave before 6:30 p.m. (in order to pick up their children) are demoted or dismissed. I think the situation in Japan is coming to a crisis, and fast; a friend of mine has twins and is pregnant with her 3rd child, and her husband regularly does not come home before 10:30 p.m. during weekdays and frequently works weekends as well. I have a word for this kind of work ethic: insanity. While putting yourself into your job and doing well is to be commended, this is burning out your best and brightest, as well as effectively blocking women from ever entering the higher echelons of management. I lived in Japan for nearly three years, and I could never take that kind of pace (luckily, I picked the countryside, which has a much slower pace and doesn't expect people to stay past 5:00 p.m. most of the time, unless it includes heavy drinking with co-workers). Anyway, all in all an interesting article, and a great glimpse after reading about our "entitlement" generation!

TOKYO, Aug. 5 — Yukako Kurose joined the work force in 1986, a year after Japan passed its first equal opportunity law. Like other career-minded young women, she hoped the law would open doors. But her promising career at a department-store corporate office ended 15 years ago when she had a baby.

Yukako Kurose said she was forced into a dead-end clerical job after she had a baby.

She was passed over for promotions after she started leaving work before 6:30 each evening to pick up her daughter from day care. Then, she was pushed into a dead-end clerical job. Finally, she quit.

“Japanese work customs make it almost impossible for women to have both a family and a career,” said Ms. Kurose, 45, who now works for a polyester company.

Since the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was passed in 1985, women have become a common sight on factory floors, at construction sites and behind the wheels of taxis. But they have had much less success reaching positions of authority, which remain the preserve of gray-suited salarymen.

In 1985, women held just 6.6 percent of all management jobs in Japanese companies and government, according to the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency. By 2005, that number had risen to only 10.1 percent, though Japan’s 27 million working women made up nearly half of its work force. By contrast, women held 42.5 percent of managerial jobs in the United States in 2005, the organization said.

Experts on women’s issues say outright prejudice is only part of Japan’s problem. An even bigger barrier to the advancement of women is the nation’s notoriously demanding corporate culture, particularly its expectation of morning-to-midnight work hours.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Tired of the "Why can't I have this?" question from your kids?

This great article from Kiplinger gives fifteen quick comebacks to kids' shopping questions.

We can't do anything about the oversized crowds, unhelpful sales clerks or cranky kids. But we can help you take some of the headaches out of back-to-school shopping -- the nagging "Can I have that?", the silent disappointment after being denied expensive sneakers or the outright blowup over, well, you name it.

We take 15 of your kids' most difficult or embarrassing shopping questions and highlight ways to head them off, or turn them into teaching opportunities about money management and smart consumerism.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

The death of a business

When I started college, I had the idea in my head that I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. I loved writing and had dominated the Journalism department in my high school, even running the small town paper when times got hard, and my dream was to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, exposing corruption, educating the public...

Well, fast forward to the summer after my sophomore year. I started working for a small, local paper as a cub reporter and I had a nose for scandal. I found out that some business had come in and bought out all the buildings on Main Street and was causing each business to close, one by one, by raising rents ridiculously high (Two and three hundred percent). But...I wasn't allowed to report it.

I found out the local factory had an asbestos problem and was exposing their workers. One man had gotten in to take photos of the asbestos piled and floating in the air, and had been promptly fired. But...I wasn't allowed to report it.

Why? Advertising dollars. Relationships with owners. Big business. Money.

I quickly realized that, in most cases, reporters' hands are tied. The editor's hands are also tied. The real decisions are made in the boardroom by the owners. And becoming the owner of a media company wasn't the subject I was studying.

That was practically an innocent time. I could not have looked 12 years into the future to see how the media would consolidate...and consolidate...and consolidate. But now the content of our news is in the hands of a few extremely powerful people. Seeing yet another consolidation -- the Wall Street Journal in the hands of the man who created Fox News -- makes me glad that bloggers are out there. We are part of the last bastion of free speech available -- we and a dwindling number of small, radical local papers, a few online news' sources, podcasters. My skepticism of traditional media mounts and more and more I read the experiences of bloggers as my news (Baghdad Burning in Iraq, for example). I may have dropped Journalism in school...but I still feel wishful about the concept.

May bloggers live long and bring down more politicians!

From Murdoch Prevails by Forbes

News Corp.'s acquisition of Dow Jones will represent a coronation of sorts for Murdoch. With a prosperous TV network, a market-leading cable news channel, a soon-to-be-launched business news channel, a major film studio, big Internet assets like social-networking giant MySpace, and now The Wall Street Journal, Murdoch has arguably become the King of All Media.

This extraordinary concentration of power in the hands of one man will trouble critics of the media industry's continuing consolidation and those who disagree with Murdoch's conservative politics.

Regardless of what one thinks of his media empire, it's clear that where he leads News Corp. from here will in many ways be the story of where the media industry itself is headed. What does the future hold for newspapers, television, the film industry and the Internet? Keep an eye on News Corp. to find out.