Social Networking

I’ve seen this in the last two conference’s main event …. Did You Know? …

…. which goes along with these Social Networking presentations, one in the AFCPE09 conference by @AAfromAA the Chaos . Well, new things learne:

• Google Alerts
• twitter-related items: TweetDeck, bit.ly [shorten your url with hit checking capabilities]
• TeacherTube …. an alternative to youtube, which has been banned in schools.
• Why social media? + tips and ideas!!!

My Extension People

Just came back from a Personal Finance conference last week. This is what I have learned and experiences from it:

• Old faces: People whom have interviewed me and those whom I know from graduate schools. One of them converted from teaching to extension expressing discontent about decreasing discipline and attitude among students.
  

  This maybe what it looks like.

• Dr. Joan Koonce writing a book, Intergrity. One thing that I remember ab0ut her is that she has a picture [pic] of her old beat-up wooden house in her office, reminding us of our herd upbringing.
• Financial literacy issues in the military is a huge issue. According to a personnel whom I talked to, this is partially related to deployment period.
• Presentations at luncheon …. make them interesting. Less talk, more entertaining presentation.
• Money management personality: There were two methods presented, Money Habitudes [habit + attitudes ?] and . From the one that I took, the result point to a tyrant money management style.
• As I have long expected, overshopping is a huge problem. With her psychological approach, Dr. April Lane Benson shared her reasons on why this issue is larger than being addicted to alcoholic drinks.
• Tips on shopping for a morgage; Consejos Para Hacer Frente a la Reduccion o Congelamiento de una Linea de Credito con Garantia Hipotecaria!!!
• Some free, complementary items are good and others are just plain bad. The coolest: Flashdrive bracelet from the award-winning Financial Security for All eXtension subgroup.
• It’s just amazing how people are trying to sell you a very focused product. In this conference, there was a product that merely focus on improving credit scores or getting your credit score to 850 [I was going to link it to its website, as shared on its product catalog, but its name is not even on google search list (12/18/2009) http://www.creditscoreplus.net/]. A healthier money mangament habit promotes improved credit score, which may be obtained through the Money Coaching Institute.
• The big extension programs tend to be in te health and food areas. So, an option is to include a short segment of personal finance in bug funded programs or market our program as a these big-funded programs such as the Smart Choice$ program.

• Social Media Marketing: New post needed!!! - next, maybe.

Warehouse Stores – Rated: O for Over Rated

I have always thought that warehouse retail chain (i.e. bulk stores) is overrated.

They sell large quantity goods in bulk at a lower price, but how much lower? I would say barely significant lower, based on my observation. Most of their good’s price may just be slightly lower compared to price of non-bulk items based on “pound-for-pound” comparison. Other observations:

• True, some products that you may use anyways (e.g. flour, sugar) may be worth it.
• …. unless it encourages over consumption. More is not necessarily better.
• Some of the grocery stores have great deals that we would be better off buying in bulk from these smaller stores.
• Waist and Waste: Besides over consumption, bulk purchases may result in waste. After consuming too much of a good, people may get tired of it that it would just go into waste.

Online Bill Payment Increase

From http://ow.ly/yVVA 11/3/2009 ….

Consumers will soon be hitting the stores en masse in search of the perfect holiday gifts. And when it comes time to pay the bills for all that joy and cheer, fewer shoppers will be reaching for their checkbook, an envelope and a book of stamps. That’s because the share of American adults who say they “always” pay their bills online has grown by 40% in the past two years. As of mid-September, 14% of Americans said that they “always” pay their bills online, up from 10% who said the same in mid-September 2007.

With credit card companies finding way to increase revenues, expect e-banking to be one of the ways to increase their revenues [Credit card issuers fight for more profit (11.03.2009)]. Other observations:

• This also means less use of checks, which means decrease revenues for the Feds, particularly the Federal Reserve.
• Greener prospective. This is very likely to be related to less paper-use, which is not good for the postal service.
• Interesting to know how many opted for automated payment.
• Be careful when you change your financial institutions. When you are no longer with the bank that you had been used to associate with e-payment, you may get charged if you forgot to change the bank details to the new one.

QuiBids: Cheap Quality Goods and the Catch …

Qui Bids Website

I am trying to purchase on Mac type product. While shopping on-line, I came accross dealmac.com, which upon reasearc was found to be reliable. But then, on top of this website was a very catchy advertisement on high-tech products being sold at a very low price. It’s:  www.quibids.com

For instance: An Apple MacBook Pro 13.3″ was sold less than $200 [11/3/2009 @ 3.06pm MST], which is about 1/5 of the market price. The catch …. [insert drumroll] …

“Each bid costs just $0.60, available in Bid Packs of 40, 75, 300, 600 and 800 bids. Click ‘Buy Bids’ to get started. QuiBids accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, & Discover.”

Legal … and slick. At least, they explicitly stated this in the registration page – not with small fonts. With many people bidding, I’m sure they are making money. I am pretty sure that they used statistics and probability to get to the $0.60-per-bid cost.