16

Goals make you miss good opportunities.

You might think I’m off my rocker, so let’s try an experiment.  Your goal is to get to San Francisco, CA from Los Angeles, CA. You have 3 kids in your car whose quiet time quota lasts about 7 and half hrs. There are several possible routes. The straight forward and the quickest route is [...]

Read the full article →

6

Fire your bank – here is a guide and checklist to help

Recently, Pew Charitable Trusts analyzed 265 different checking programs offered by the 10 biggest U.S. banks and found 49 types of checking account fees in all. I opened a checking account with Wachovia a few years ago. For the first year I “donated” quite a bit to Wachovia due to my own ignorance. Then I [...]

Read the full article →

25

Creative ways to help a charity without spending any money

Seven billion people now inhabit the Earth. That is mind blowingly amazing and scary at the same time. Below is an excerpt from the UN report (pdf): “While women are on average having fewer children than they were in the 1960s, our numbers continue to rise. Globally, people are younger—and older—than ever before. In some of the poorest countries, [...]

Read the full article →

12

How to make 31 days seem better than a month?

Would you prefer a dishwasher with 9 years of warranty or 108 months of warranty? Would you prefer a watch that can stay underwater for 1.5 minutes or 90 seconds? Would you buy a smartphone that got a 4 out of a possible 5 rating or 798 points out of 1000? Would you prefer a [...]

Read the full article →

14

Grouponomics : Groupon, A smashing success or poised to fail?

Groupon has been in the news again lately with talk about its IPO and what appears to be its hope for a very high valuation. However only 66% of the companies who participated in Groupon can deem the deal a success Groupon is the fastest growing company ever. 42% of the Restaurants that participated in [...]

Read the full article →

27

This little piggy wants to retire…

Once upon a time, in the charming little town of Pigglesworth, there lived five little piggies – Patricia, Priscilla, Pippin, Pookie and Pinky. They all had a great desire to retire and enjoy the  relaxed life around Pigglesworth.  Here are their stories: This little piggy went to market The oldest piggy Patricia wanted to become [...]

Read the full article →

15

How we lose money on groceries

Everyone wants to save money on groceries.  In spite of numerous tips to save money on groceries, the grocery store is still a major area for impulse shopping. The reason? Visual merchandising. Visual merchandising is not a new concept, it has been in practice for decades now. Depending on customer’s tastes, the layout and ambiance changes but [...]

Read the full article →

21

When frugality = stupidity : Illusion of saving money

Which of the squares A & B is a darker shade of gray? If you answered A as I did first, you are wrong The answer is both of them are the exact shade of gray. (See the proof at the end of the post). Everyday we are tricked by a number of illusions. Sometimes [...]

Read the full article →

13

Big rewards, lousy performance : When motivation fails

One of the frustrations of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are the big bonuses the CEOs of the banks got, after getting bail out money. And the reason often cited by the companies is that bonuses are necessary to retain talent. But the extraordinary talent, retained by millions of dollars have failed to bring in [...]

Read the full article →