To go or not to go—that IS a question!
More precisely, we’ve been given numbers that tell us what happens when we DON’T go, as well as how much to spend to make it fit our education budget—the “Kelley Blue Book” number of what a college education is worth to us in terms of earning power.
And let’s not forget the politics of education, as they are left-leaning to the point of falling over. Old hippies from the Haight-Ashbury days, whose parents were rich enough to send them through college without help, took CETA* jobs at campuses, and began teaching us the gospel according to Marx, Lenin, and the like, as well as a thorough indoctrination of ecology. At university level, they published their way into tenure positions, and some are still there today in lofty places of power—department heads, administrators, and deans.
All, of course, are richly-paid union jobs.
The education system of today is rife with leftist, heavily-unionized teachers from kindergarten all the way up to doctorate level. It’s gotten to the point where parents still believe that when their kids get to college, they’ll learn how to think for themselves as adults. Wrong! At least, in public institutions it is. Private ones are another story.
Anyway—back to college: numbers recently released tell us how much a public and private education costs, and how much that Bachelor degree will increase our earning power vs. a high school diploma. This number is our “education budget” of $23,000 (rounding up) for a Bachelor’s, and $49,000 (rounding down) for a Master’s. We should seek to do two things with this number:
1. Try not to go over it unless occupational intentions require it.
2. Make sure your intended field of occupation is going to pay more than the college budget number in starting salary each year. Otherwise, it’d be a wash.
Example: graduating from Harvard with a degree in social work—unless you’re geared for an administrative position, a basic run-of-the mill social worker won’t make much more than $23,000/year, so this would not be a wise move.
The long-held notion of hiring preference by where one graduated from is no longer true—employers don’t care where you went to school, or where your degree is from. All they care about is that you actually graduated, which they will verify. So the old maneuver of starting out in public institutions and finishing at an Ivy League campus should no longer be your aim. Don’t pay for the vanity if you can’t afford it, and I’d say that a $23,000 budget readily says NO.
If that extra earning power is for you, then you need to know a few things beforehand. If you can’t answer that dreaded question we’ve all been asked for time immemorial, then buy yourself a couple of years by taking general required courses that will work for ALL majors, like math, science, a foreign language, English, and so on. When you’ve completed those first two years, THEN you must declare a major before heading out into the wild blue campus yonder—if you STILL have no clue what you want to do, then pursue a Liberal Arts degree and cover your behind for several occasions. Most jobs today only require a degree, and don’t specify which one—just having a verifiable degree is all that’s necessary. If you’re applying for a more specialized job, then a more specialized degree may be called for. Here’s what that Bachelor’s degree is really worth.
If you have absolutely no clue at all about anything, the best place to start is starting salaries—find out where you can earn the most with the least in specialized education. This move will buy you time in the future to save money or find financial aid to pursue further education as you can afford it. Here is a starting salary average for people with a high school diploma only (and it’s barely over poverty level before taxes). Then, when that’s completed, go to your Yellow Pages and see exactly how much established competition there is in your local area—as you can guess, doctors, lawyers, plumbers, veterinarians, and other fairly thick fields (in terms of pages) are pretty much maxed out for new entrants.
Another option: offshore your education by checking out campuses (via web) overseas. The currency exchange rates and residency requirements just might be an affordable way to increase your education. If corporations are off-shoring to save money in labor costs, why can’t you do the same with college tuition?
According to Richard Florida, author of the “Creative Class” books, our system of education in America isn’t really beneficial to anyone until grad school—the elementary school system of France is best, followed by college in Britain, then to America for grad school. We all can’t afford to go globe-trotting just to educate ourselves or our children properly, so perhaps we should just learn to work more efficiently with the system we have.
First off, let’s talk shopping and price comparison—you know, the good old price book method. Compare costs (and I mean ALL costs, not just tuition) per year at campuses just like you would cans of peas and packages of meat. Where in this country can you get the biggest bang for your college buck? There’s a calculator here.
Next, find out what degrees and programs will get you the biggest pay-boosting bang for your 4-year investment (this can also be applied to grad schools).
Finally, who pays the most starting salary and where (choose location and occupation, then on next screen, choose “basic report”—that one is free.)
After the starting salary check, be sure to go to the online Yellow Pages in that area to see the established competition’s saturation point (thickness in terms of pages). This will tell you whether or not to take the entrepreneurial route right away or pull for a corporate team first.
Above all else, remember that learning is life-long. What you do for money isn’t all you are, and it shouldn’t define you as a person. What you sign up for in college is just a starting point—you don’t have to be, say, an accountant for the rest of your life. While accounting pays your bills, you can pursue other training or education that will allow you to make a more personally-satisfying career choice that also pays the bills and puts food on the table.
There really is no need to graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt if you take your time, carefully shop, and make the comparisons about where it’s most likely to pay off for you in the end. The “correct” college search doesn’t end it for you, unfortunately—then comes the “where can I live and work” search. Of course, enough cannot be said for early college prep courses in high school, earning scholarships, and various monetary awards to go towards college costs—all ways to defray expenses.
Just as too many students take the first college acceptance offer that comes in the mail, too many people take the first job offer that comes along. If you’ve prepared by doing careful shopping and program completion, you now need to do one more shop: location. To learn where you can get the biggest bang for your cost-of-living buck (including all taxes), check this and this out.
So all told, you need to do four searches:
1. the college itself
2. the program
3. where to start working (or aim for)
4. established competition in the target area
Next comes the spouse—unfortunately, there are no handy links to turn to for THAT advice. Suffice it to say many people (again) jump on the first bandwagon that rolls through town, meaning the first person to propose. My advice is to look around while in college—yep, the old “mom and dad” advice from yesteryear. The reason: because a better-earning spouse is someone going to college to earn that degree, same as you. If he/she’s in the grad school program, all the better—you WANT someone shooting for success. Two good earners in the family will only help things.
Back to college and shopping—the good old cost-per-unit method of deciphering bang-to-buck ratios will be with you (in different forms) for the rest of your life. All you need to do is fill in the “unit” and apply it: to college, groceries, where to live, what to drive, etc. This system is good for both public and private learning.
________________________________________________________
*CETA: Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), U.S. government program designed to assist economically disadvantaged, unemployed, or underemployed persons. Enacted in 1973, CETA provided block grants to state and local governments to support public and private job training and such youth programs as the Job Corps and Summer Youth Employment. In 1982, CETA was superseded by the Job Training Partnership Act, which established the Office of Job Training Programs. In short, it was a government-run “jobs creation” program that put a lot of degreed hippies to work back in its day—now they run our public education system (into the ground).
Monday, October 30, 2006
Friday, October 27, 2006
Affordable Health Care on Every Corner
I’m SO sick and tired of politicians and “helpless victims of the middle class” wailing about affordable health care—and yes, this includes you too, Lou Dobbs. If anything, there is an incredible breadth of healthcare availability in this country—go check your phone book’s yellow pages if you don’t believe me. You’d think that you can’t swing your arms in your own town without hitting a doctor’s office!
Accessing it is another matter, and one clearly taken care of by market economics: those who can pay, or pay for coverage, get in. The rest do without, or turn to Medicare.
There is a third option available: prevention. If you EAT and EXERCISE to maintain a healthy weight, blood pressure, and blood glucose level, and your blood and urine tests are in a normal range for nutrient content or excretion, you don’t really need to access health care unless there’s an obvious problem, or for ongoing monitoring.
The term “affordable health care” has become synonymous with HMO plans and other low-fee insurance. Time and time again, the insurance industry has proven that the more access one has to doctors and hospitals, the more one uses them—and for quite trivial things. Some people think that having an HMO card allows them to go to the nearest hospital for every sniffle and cough that comes along.
Having a hospital or doctor’s office treat that sniffle or cough can be quite expensive, so it had better be a good one—persistent for longer than a couple of weeks, bloody, painful, or one of the “see a physician” symptoms that’s listed on the back of an OTC medication.
People tend to overuse health care because they don’t actually see a bill. They may see a statement of what the insurer was charged (usually astronomical amounts), and what the insurer paid for the treatment, but the patient himself never pays more than the allotted co-pay, which is peanuts. For the mere $5 or $10 co-pay, doctor’s offices and hospitals may as well have a turnstile on the front entrance, making the “access” problem more of a parking problem!
Affordable healthcare for those without access to insurance or the ability to pay cash (always the cheapest route) is called the grocery store, and there’s one on every corner. By carefully choosing what you eat and how you eat it, you can prevent a whole lot of diseases from ever forming, so you no longer have to worry about insuring against them—for example, most cancers have already had their mystery solved as to cause and prevention; most rheumatic-related diseases can be controlled by NOT eating certain things and supplementing with others; diabetes can be controlled, reversed, and even prevented by a careful eating and supplementation plan; and the same can be said for heart disease and many other cardiac conditions. The best part is it’s all on the web for public viewing, and in the library for patron check-out. Access is free as long as you can get to the web or the library—for many, both are located in the same place.
As long as there is access to HMOs and other cheap insurance, there will be no effort made to self-treat or take any preventative action. As long as health care continues to create the illusion that $5-$10 will fix anything, that money won’t be spent in the produce aisle or on fish oil supplements. If you have your doubts about produce alone fighting disease, Yahoo Health just had an article on how leafy greens and crucifers protect against Alzheimer’s.
Other than negotiating and paying cash for services, prevention will always be the best measure—believe me, the money’s better spent in the produce aisle than in the doctor’s office and drug store. Your time is better spent behind a shopping cart choosing nutritious functional foods for you and your family, rather than cooped up in a waiting room full of coughing, sneezing, germ-and-virus-spreading sick people, then again at a pharmacy counter waiting area.
More days spent well and productive mean more days on the job, in the kitchen, at the wheel, and fewer sick days for the kids. More productivity may mean more money for some people (depending on job), while fewer sick days for kids mean more time in school learning. Feeling well in general feels good, and makes you better able to fight off other problems, like depression and fatigue. Actually BEING well most of the time allows you to tinker with your health care options and choose a less-costly plan than the frequent-flyer-type HMOs, and allows you to avoid being a burden to the rest of us taxpayers by relying on Medicare for something entirely preventable.
Now I realize that produce isn’t going to fix things like broken bones, but it may keep you healthy enough (and alert enough) to spot and avoid the dangers that may break that bone in the first place—see how this works? You not only feed the body, you feed the mind too. Broken bones and unforeseen accidents are what insurance is REALLY for, not the occasional sniffle or cough. Ongoing monitoring of chronic conditions can easily be paid for with cash or a something other than an HMO plan—believe me, cash is much cheaper for this!
Now you know how to access affordable health care without actually seeing medical staff of any sort, or dealing with insurance hassles. Start in your grocery store with leafy greens, crucifers, and other fresh vegetables—eat them at least twice daily, either cooked separate or raw mixed in a salad. For the price of a package of hot dogs and a box of macaroni-n-cheese, you could have bought some disease-fighting broccoli or a bag of spring mix salad greens—how’s THAT for affordable health care?
We don’t need more access to health insurance—we need to make better choices about where we spend food dollars, and what foods we feed our families. Information about what foods are the most nutritious, go to the web and look up “super foods”, “functional foods”, and “food as medicine.” If you don’t have web access, then go to the library and start looking in the indexes of health books for these same terms.
Quite literally, affordable healthcare is on every corner. Changing your family’s eating habits by changing the foods they eat will save you lots of money on healthcare insurance premiums, and give you money to put to better use—college funds, retirement, or just more vegetables and leafy greens. Changing diet can also mean the difference between NEEDING and WANTING health insurance.
Resources:
Eating for your disease
Supplement look-up
Super Foods
Prior articles on using food as medicine:
The Scoop on Longer and Healthier Living
The Prescription Drug Cost Armament
Skipping Nickels and Dimes for Bigger Savings (scroll down until you see “health care”)
Produce--A Necessary Cost
A Big Waste of Organic Dollars
“Intelligent” Nutrition
Accessing it is another matter, and one clearly taken care of by market economics: those who can pay, or pay for coverage, get in. The rest do without, or turn to Medicare.
There is a third option available: prevention. If you EAT and EXERCISE to maintain a healthy weight, blood pressure, and blood glucose level, and your blood and urine tests are in a normal range for nutrient content or excretion, you don’t really need to access health care unless there’s an obvious problem, or for ongoing monitoring.
The term “affordable health care” has become synonymous with HMO plans and other low-fee insurance. Time and time again, the insurance industry has proven that the more access one has to doctors and hospitals, the more one uses them—and for quite trivial things. Some people think that having an HMO card allows them to go to the nearest hospital for every sniffle and cough that comes along.
Having a hospital or doctor’s office treat that sniffle or cough can be quite expensive, so it had better be a good one—persistent for longer than a couple of weeks, bloody, painful, or one of the “see a physician” symptoms that’s listed on the back of an OTC medication.
People tend to overuse health care because they don’t actually see a bill. They may see a statement of what the insurer was charged (usually astronomical amounts), and what the insurer paid for the treatment, but the patient himself never pays more than the allotted co-pay, which is peanuts. For the mere $5 or $10 co-pay, doctor’s offices and hospitals may as well have a turnstile on the front entrance, making the “access” problem more of a parking problem!
Affordable healthcare for those without access to insurance or the ability to pay cash (always the cheapest route) is called the grocery store, and there’s one on every corner. By carefully choosing what you eat and how you eat it, you can prevent a whole lot of diseases from ever forming, so you no longer have to worry about insuring against them—for example, most cancers have already had their mystery solved as to cause and prevention; most rheumatic-related diseases can be controlled by NOT eating certain things and supplementing with others; diabetes can be controlled, reversed, and even prevented by a careful eating and supplementation plan; and the same can be said for heart disease and many other cardiac conditions. The best part is it’s all on the web for public viewing, and in the library for patron check-out. Access is free as long as you can get to the web or the library—for many, both are located in the same place.
As long as there is access to HMOs and other cheap insurance, there will be no effort made to self-treat or take any preventative action. As long as health care continues to create the illusion that $5-$10 will fix anything, that money won’t be spent in the produce aisle or on fish oil supplements. If you have your doubts about produce alone fighting disease, Yahoo Health just had an article on how leafy greens and crucifers protect against Alzheimer’s.
Other than negotiating and paying cash for services, prevention will always be the best measure—believe me, the money’s better spent in the produce aisle than in the doctor’s office and drug store. Your time is better spent behind a shopping cart choosing nutritious functional foods for you and your family, rather than cooped up in a waiting room full of coughing, sneezing, germ-and-virus-spreading sick people, then again at a pharmacy counter waiting area.
More days spent well and productive mean more days on the job, in the kitchen, at the wheel, and fewer sick days for the kids. More productivity may mean more money for some people (depending on job), while fewer sick days for kids mean more time in school learning. Feeling well in general feels good, and makes you better able to fight off other problems, like depression and fatigue. Actually BEING well most of the time allows you to tinker with your health care options and choose a less-costly plan than the frequent-flyer-type HMOs, and allows you to avoid being a burden to the rest of us taxpayers by relying on Medicare for something entirely preventable.
Now I realize that produce isn’t going to fix things like broken bones, but it may keep you healthy enough (and alert enough) to spot and avoid the dangers that may break that bone in the first place—see how this works? You not only feed the body, you feed the mind too. Broken bones and unforeseen accidents are what insurance is REALLY for, not the occasional sniffle or cough. Ongoing monitoring of chronic conditions can easily be paid for with cash or a something other than an HMO plan—believe me, cash is much cheaper for this!
Now you know how to access affordable health care without actually seeing medical staff of any sort, or dealing with insurance hassles. Start in your grocery store with leafy greens, crucifers, and other fresh vegetables—eat them at least twice daily, either cooked separate or raw mixed in a salad. For the price of a package of hot dogs and a box of macaroni-n-cheese, you could have bought some disease-fighting broccoli or a bag of spring mix salad greens—how’s THAT for affordable health care?
We don’t need more access to health insurance—we need to make better choices about where we spend food dollars, and what foods we feed our families. Information about what foods are the most nutritious, go to the web and look up “super foods”, “functional foods”, and “food as medicine.” If you don’t have web access, then go to the library and start looking in the indexes of health books for these same terms.
Quite literally, affordable healthcare is on every corner. Changing your family’s eating habits by changing the foods they eat will save you lots of money on healthcare insurance premiums, and give you money to put to better use—college funds, retirement, or just more vegetables and leafy greens. Changing diet can also mean the difference between NEEDING and WANTING health insurance.
Resources:
Eating for your disease
Supplement look-up
Super Foods
Prior articles on using food as medicine:
The Scoop on Longer and Healthier Living
The Prescription Drug Cost Armament
Skipping Nickels and Dimes for Bigger Savings (scroll down until you see “health care”)
Produce--A Necessary Cost
A Big Waste of Organic Dollars
“Intelligent” Nutrition
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
“Show Me the Money!”
No, this isn’t about Tom Cruise, marginal football players, or a long-and-twisted love story with an accountant. This is, however, about negotiation for a better salary, just like the movie.
Negotiations can be tricky—you might risk asking too much for too little, or the opposite: asking to little for too much. You need to know how to sufficiently arm yourself and what to realistically expect. You want the most you can get, and here are some tips from Ben Dattner of Dattner Consulting:
1. Do your homework and know your bottom line when you walk through that door. The needs of a recent college grad with student loan debt are different from someone married with kids and a mortgage.
2. Keep your expectations grounded—don’t reach for the sky just because you think you can. Check comparable positions on your field for pay levels. Trade magazines, recruiters, and web sites such as Salary.com are good starting points.
3. Get the timing right. Make sure your boss is in a good mood, and keep the conversation professional and upbeat.
4. Prove your worth to the boss and company. Most companies would rather hire and retain employees who want to stay rather than those who are there for the paycheck.
5. Discussing other people’s salaries takes the spotlight off you. Keep the focus on you and your accomplishments and what you have to offer for the new pay raise. Keep the conversation on what THEY’RE getting for the money rather than what they’re giving.
6. When the positions are far apart, seek a compromise with a salary review in six months. Get to a place where everyone wins.
Now that you’ve gotten that raise, here’s what to do with it:
1. Pay yourself first through a fully-funded IRA (or IRAs for both of you), a 401k (or a contribution increase), education savings accounts for the kids, health savings accounts, etc. to shelter that newly-gotten gain from excess taxation. A fully-funded emergency account is a good idea as well in case you’re shown the door instead of the money.
Negotiations can be tricky—you might risk asking too much for too little, or the opposite: asking to little for too much. You need to know how to sufficiently arm yourself and what to realistically expect. You want the most you can get, and here are some tips from Ben Dattner of Dattner Consulting:
1. Do your homework and know your bottom line when you walk through that door. The needs of a recent college grad with student loan debt are different from someone married with kids and a mortgage.
2. Keep your expectations grounded—don’t reach for the sky just because you think you can. Check comparable positions on your field for pay levels. Trade magazines, recruiters, and web sites such as Salary.com are good starting points.
3. Get the timing right. Make sure your boss is in a good mood, and keep the conversation professional and upbeat.
4. Prove your worth to the boss and company. Most companies would rather hire and retain employees who want to stay rather than those who are there for the paycheck.
5. Discussing other people’s salaries takes the spotlight off you. Keep the focus on you and your accomplishments and what you have to offer for the new pay raise. Keep the conversation on what THEY’RE getting for the money rather than what they’re giving.
6. When the positions are far apart, seek a compromise with a salary review in six months. Get to a place where everyone wins.
Now that you’ve gotten that raise, here’s what to do with it:
1. Pay yourself first through a fully-funded IRA (or IRAs for both of you), a 401k (or a contribution increase), education savings accounts for the kids, health savings accounts, etc. to shelter that newly-gotten gain from excess taxation. A fully-funded emergency account is a good idea as well in case you’re shown the door instead of the money.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Scam-Proof Yourself to Eliminate Risk
I got more junk mail, but this time it was useful. This particular piece was from my bank, and it contained an article on spotting consumer scams, including this quiz:
1. What was the top consumer fraud complaint last year?
A) Bogus sweepstake prizes
B) Identity theft
C) Fake foreign money offers
D) Internet auctions
The correct answer was B. If your credit cards are lost or stolen, report it immediately with the creditor, then file a complaint with the FTC at 1-877-382-4357. Keep a close watch on your credit record to make sure no new credit has been opened in your name.
2. What is “phishing”?
A) How identity thieves acquire personal information online
B) Rummaging through trashcans for useful information
C) A method telemarketers use to identify seniors
D) How the IRS tracks down tax dodgers
The correct answer was A. The way to protect yourself from phishing is to never EVER use links to websites given in an e-mail. If the site is a familiar one to you and you do business with them regularly, have that site bookmarked, and always use your bookmarks to get somewhere. This avoids giving look-alike sites your login information.
3. When does the IRS contact taxpayers via e-mail?
A) When the agency needs your Social Security number
B) When you’re owed a refund
C) Never
D) When the agency has a question about your tax return
The correct answer is C. The IRS always contacts taxpayers through regular mail and includes a phone number to verify the authenticity of the letter. This prevents you from becoming susceptible to fraud online.
4. What is the costliest telemarketing scam?
A) Sweepstakes/prizes
B) Scholarships
C) Magazine sales
D) Credit Card offers
The correct answer is A. Most fraudulent offers require you to pay a fee to claim your prize. To eliminate the risk of fraudulent telemarketing, you can fight back by reporting any suspicious offers to fraud.org, or by opting out of telemarketer access by registering all your phones with the National Do Not Call Registry at donotcall.gov.
5. What’s the best way to spot a predatory loan?
A) Balloon payments
B) High interest rates
C) Penalties for early payment
D) All of the above
The correct answer is D. To avoid traps like the ones listed above, shop for the best rates, ask questions, have someone you trust review the documents if you don’t understand them, never NEVER sign a blank document that someone offers to fill in later, and never give in to high-pressure sales tactics—just get up and leave if it gets too hot for you to handle.
This addition is a personal one, and is a scam of a different sort.
6. A stranger walking down the road aimlessly suddenly sees you in your front yard and approaches you, offering to mow your lawn. You:
A) Let him do it
B) Make an appointment for a later date and time
C) Ask for a business card or some sort of documentation
D) Send him on his way
The correct answer is D. A co-worker of hubby’s had this experience, and he let the stranger in to mow his lawn. After job completion, the co-worker was hit with a $50 bill and threatened with a lien on his house if he didn’t pay up. Fortunately for the co-worker, he offered merchandise in trade, and the stranger accepted. This proves that just about anyone who performs any kind of work on your house or yard and doesn’t receive payment can hit the jackpot just by slapping a lien on your house—and your equity and credit.
And this little gem for the bleeding heart in all of us.
7. A woman and little girl are walking down the road in search of a place to live. She says she’s trying to escape a battering husband and domestic violence, and just wants to get off the street for the sake of the child. You:
A) Let them in, offering a place to stay indefinitely
B) Send them both on their way
C) Give them a ride to the nearest domestic violence shelter
D) Take them back home
The correct answers are B and C. Again, another co-worker of hubby’s was waylaid by the sad sight of a bedraggled mother and child supposedly trying to escape an abusive home life, and was waylaid alright—by a scamster and child looking for a free place to live and hide out from the law. It turns out the mother was wanted for felony drug trafficking, and the police had raided her home looking for her. Had he taken her and the child in, he himself would have been guilty of harboring a fugitive, and could have gone to jail if the police ever caught up with her. It never pays to get personally involved with strangers, no matter how pathetic the situation—there are agencies equipped to handle that. If these people don’t use them, then there’s a reason...and it usually isn’t good.
1. What was the top consumer fraud complaint last year?
A) Bogus sweepstake prizes
B) Identity theft
C) Fake foreign money offers
D) Internet auctions
The correct answer was B. If your credit cards are lost or stolen, report it immediately with the creditor, then file a complaint with the FTC at 1-877-382-4357. Keep a close watch on your credit record to make sure no new credit has been opened in your name.
2. What is “phishing”?
A) How identity thieves acquire personal information online
B) Rummaging through trashcans for useful information
C) A method telemarketers use to identify seniors
D) How the IRS tracks down tax dodgers
The correct answer was A. The way to protect yourself from phishing is to never EVER use links to websites given in an e-mail. If the site is a familiar one to you and you do business with them regularly, have that site bookmarked, and always use your bookmarks to get somewhere. This avoids giving look-alike sites your login information.
3. When does the IRS contact taxpayers via e-mail?
A) When the agency needs your Social Security number
B) When you’re owed a refund
C) Never
D) When the agency has a question about your tax return
The correct answer is C. The IRS always contacts taxpayers through regular mail and includes a phone number to verify the authenticity of the letter. This prevents you from becoming susceptible to fraud online.
4. What is the costliest telemarketing scam?
A) Sweepstakes/prizes
B) Scholarships
C) Magazine sales
D) Credit Card offers
The correct answer is A. Most fraudulent offers require you to pay a fee to claim your prize. To eliminate the risk of fraudulent telemarketing, you can fight back by reporting any suspicious offers to fraud.org, or by opting out of telemarketer access by registering all your phones with the National Do Not Call Registry at donotcall.gov.
5. What’s the best way to spot a predatory loan?
A) Balloon payments
B) High interest rates
C) Penalties for early payment
D) All of the above
The correct answer is D. To avoid traps like the ones listed above, shop for the best rates, ask questions, have someone you trust review the documents if you don’t understand them, never NEVER sign a blank document that someone offers to fill in later, and never give in to high-pressure sales tactics—just get up and leave if it gets too hot for you to handle.
This addition is a personal one, and is a scam of a different sort.
6. A stranger walking down the road aimlessly suddenly sees you in your front yard and approaches you, offering to mow your lawn. You:
A) Let him do it
B) Make an appointment for a later date and time
C) Ask for a business card or some sort of documentation
D) Send him on his way
The correct answer is D. A co-worker of hubby’s had this experience, and he let the stranger in to mow his lawn. After job completion, the co-worker was hit with a $50 bill and threatened with a lien on his house if he didn’t pay up. Fortunately for the co-worker, he offered merchandise in trade, and the stranger accepted. This proves that just about anyone who performs any kind of work on your house or yard and doesn’t receive payment can hit the jackpot just by slapping a lien on your house—and your equity and credit.
And this little gem for the bleeding heart in all of us.
7. A woman and little girl are walking down the road in search of a place to live. She says she’s trying to escape a battering husband and domestic violence, and just wants to get off the street for the sake of the child. You:
A) Let them in, offering a place to stay indefinitely
B) Send them both on their way
C) Give them a ride to the nearest domestic violence shelter
D) Take them back home
The correct answers are B and C. Again, another co-worker of hubby’s was waylaid by the sad sight of a bedraggled mother and child supposedly trying to escape an abusive home life, and was waylaid alright—by a scamster and child looking for a free place to live and hide out from the law. It turns out the mother was wanted for felony drug trafficking, and the police had raided her home looking for her. Had he taken her and the child in, he himself would have been guilty of harboring a fugitive, and could have gone to jail if the police ever caught up with her. It never pays to get personally involved with strangers, no matter how pathetic the situation—there are agencies equipped to handle that. If these people don’t use them, then there’s a reason...and it usually isn’t good.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Junk Mail Humor Better Than Comedy Central
Go ahead, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Carlos Mencia, beat me. You had to be there.
I received a special invitation to attend a lecture on…lessee here…(flip-flip)…unique wealth creating secrets…(mumble-mumble-mumble)…oh, and getting my financial house in order. Donald Trump Junior, billed as a “rising real estate guru” will be among the speakers. The invitation lists four of the wealthiest self-made millionaires in America as the other speakers—not by name—but I can guess who they are, judging by the antics of dear ol’ Dad Trump.
I laughed until I almost peed right there at the mailbox. The neighbors came over to see if they should dial 911 or something. I stopped, came back in, and immediately ran to the computer. First stop, e-mail the real estate guru-killer. Second stop, to MS Word—I smell a blog article!
So now, according to my junk mail invitation, I’m supposed to make arrangements to attend a lecture on…lessee…Saturday, November 11, from 8-5, to go listen to this moron and all his multi-level marketing friends tell me something I already know. It’s free of cost, so I might show up just for the laughs. On second thought, maybe not—I have better things to do on a Saturday, like sorting hubby’s sock drawer. This would also cut deeply into my Book TV and reading time as well.
This lecture promises me that I will learn how to:
1. regularly buy real estate for 31-57% below value—I can do this now by buying FORECLOSURES and REO PROPERTIES, negotiating the hell out of each and every deal.
2. use 21 money-making secrets of millionaires—I can do this now by using information given in Thomas Stanley’s books.
3. legally cut all capital gains tax to zero on the sale of real estate, stocks, or a business—Gosh, again I can do this for myself with a 1031 exchange, a wash sale, or offshoring.
4. lower my 2006 tax bill by 31%--I do that NOW with W-4 manipulation, full contributions to IRAs and 401(k) plans, and taking all the tax writeoffs I can qualify for.
5. retire in 2-5 years with an additional cash flow of up to $9100/month—now we both know that this is complete hogwash unless you win the lottery, make a super large real estate purchase of condominium towers, join the Carlton Sheets MLM racket, or get yourself involved with drug trafficking. My husband also noted that the weasel words “up to” are in this statement, meaning that even $1 qualifies as “up to.”
6. protect 100% of assets from all lawsuits, liens, levies, bankruptcy, and even divorce—well, I can think of two ways to go about this: trusts and poverty. If you have no assets to begin with, you have nothing to protect!
7. get government-approved investments guaranteeing 16-50% returns—these would be called “real estate tax liens”, and I know that they aren’t government-approved OR as high as 50% (the old Michigan rate). Uncle Sam has absolutely nothing to do with approving these investments.
8. learn how one high school graduate made 3 million dollars in three years—yeah, through hokey lectures like this one and fast-and-furious MLM marketing program empires like Carlton Sheets’. Thomas Stanley tells of many high school dropouts that made more money than that!
The closing footnote contains this note: “At this conference you will learn from Donald Trump Jr. what others have paid over $20,000 to learn. Make November 11th the day you put your financial house in order.”
I don’t believe I spent nearly that much learning what I know, financially-speaking or not. The ones who did spend that much money are suckers, and I hope they got what they paid for. There is such a thing as “value learning.”
So now that you see what I got in my mailbox, and why it made me go into bladder-crisis mode, who wants my tickets? I got two for the Hampton Roads Convention Center.
There ought to be a law against putting your child, no matter what age, into any MLM marketing scheme or on any lecture circuit, especially to benefit shady characters in the first place. I wonder if Boy Trump knows that he’s only serving to feed his father, Robert Kiyosaki, Carlton Sheets, and any other loser that wrote a book with his father. Talk about a glorified MLM whipping boy!
I suppose ol' Trump Daddy would put his daughter Ivanka out on a street corner next when she gets done running the remains of his empire into the ground--either The Donald is really broke, or he has one hell of a succession plan under way, and the whole thing ought to be out on Comedy Central!
UPDATE: This was issued a few days later, and is a good followup to my stinging junk mail bladderfest.
I received a special invitation to attend a lecture on…lessee here…(flip-flip)…unique wealth creating secrets…(mumble-mumble-mumble)…oh, and getting my financial house in order. Donald Trump Junior, billed as a “rising real estate guru” will be among the speakers. The invitation lists four of the wealthiest self-made millionaires in America as the other speakers—not by name—but I can guess who they are, judging by the antics of dear ol’ Dad Trump.
I laughed until I almost peed right there at the mailbox. The neighbors came over to see if they should dial 911 or something. I stopped, came back in, and immediately ran to the computer. First stop, e-mail the real estate guru-killer. Second stop, to MS Word—I smell a blog article!
So now, according to my junk mail invitation, I’m supposed to make arrangements to attend a lecture on…lessee…Saturday, November 11, from 8-5, to go listen to this moron and all his multi-level marketing friends tell me something I already know. It’s free of cost, so I might show up just for the laughs. On second thought, maybe not—I have better things to do on a Saturday, like sorting hubby’s sock drawer. This would also cut deeply into my Book TV and reading time as well.
This lecture promises me that I will learn how to:
1. regularly buy real estate for 31-57% below value—I can do this now by buying FORECLOSURES and REO PROPERTIES, negotiating the hell out of each and every deal.
2. use 21 money-making secrets of millionaires—I can do this now by using information given in Thomas Stanley’s books.
3. legally cut all capital gains tax to zero on the sale of real estate, stocks, or a business—Gosh, again I can do this for myself with a 1031 exchange, a wash sale, or offshoring.
4. lower my 2006 tax bill by 31%--I do that NOW with W-4 manipulation, full contributions to IRAs and 401(k) plans, and taking all the tax writeoffs I can qualify for.
5. retire in 2-5 years with an additional cash flow of up to $9100/month—now we both know that this is complete hogwash unless you win the lottery, make a super large real estate purchase of condominium towers, join the Carlton Sheets MLM racket, or get yourself involved with drug trafficking. My husband also noted that the weasel words “up to” are in this statement, meaning that even $1 qualifies as “up to.”
6. protect 100% of assets from all lawsuits, liens, levies, bankruptcy, and even divorce—well, I can think of two ways to go about this: trusts and poverty. If you have no assets to begin with, you have nothing to protect!
7. get government-approved investments guaranteeing 16-50% returns—these would be called “real estate tax liens”, and I know that they aren’t government-approved OR as high as 50% (the old Michigan rate). Uncle Sam has absolutely nothing to do with approving these investments.
8. learn how one high school graduate made 3 million dollars in three years—yeah, through hokey lectures like this one and fast-and-furious MLM marketing program empires like Carlton Sheets’. Thomas Stanley tells of many high school dropouts that made more money than that!
The closing footnote contains this note: “At this conference you will learn from Donald Trump Jr. what others have paid over $20,000 to learn. Make November 11th the day you put your financial house in order.”
I don’t believe I spent nearly that much learning what I know, financially-speaking or not. The ones who did spend that much money are suckers, and I hope they got what they paid for. There is such a thing as “value learning.”
So now that you see what I got in my mailbox, and why it made me go into bladder-crisis mode, who wants my tickets? I got two for the Hampton Roads Convention Center.
There ought to be a law against putting your child, no matter what age, into any MLM marketing scheme or on any lecture circuit, especially to benefit shady characters in the first place. I wonder if Boy Trump knows that he’s only serving to feed his father, Robert Kiyosaki, Carlton Sheets, and any other loser that wrote a book with his father. Talk about a glorified MLM whipping boy!
I suppose ol' Trump Daddy would put his daughter Ivanka out on a street corner next when she gets done running the remains of his empire into the ground--either The Donald is really broke, or he has one hell of a succession plan under way, and the whole thing ought to be out on Comedy Central!
UPDATE: This was issued a few days later, and is a good followup to my stinging junk mail bladderfest.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Credit Card Games and Victimhood
From a recent Dollar Stretcher “Outrage”: My daughter has held a Chase Master Card for three or four years, since she was a college student, when she opened the account at a 19.8% interest rate, presumably fixed. She worked at only part-time jobs and was a full-time student at the time of opening the account. She graduated last spring, got a full-time job, new car loan, and paid three or four times the minimum payment on her credit cards for several months. In December last year, she purchased a laptop computer which she put on the card, and the next month she paid the entire amount for the computer plus more than double her minimum payment. At that time, her interest rate was increased to 26.99%. She was not aware of it until recently, much to her disappointment. She called the company today and was told about it and that they had sent her a letter stating this. Chase left this punitive rate on until her call, despite the conditions of the punitive rate--a large purchase--having been paid off. She never made a late payment nor exceeded her credit limit. She was simply penalized for using her allowable credit line.
Today when she requested a lower rate she was given 9.99% fixed. For months they profited over her lack of vigilance, to the tune of 17% interest! And it shows that calling a creditor can indeed result in a lower rate. Her balance is now low enough that she plans to pay it off, and then use it only for purchases she will pay off the following month in order not to incur finance charges. She won't close the account because she needs the longevity of the account on her credit history. Always, let the buyer beware!"
I have to ask the following questions (as will a lot of readers, I’m sure):
• Why didn’t your daughter search for a better rate right from the get-go?
• Why didn’t she nail down the terms of her agreement, whether it was fixed or variable?
• Why didn’t she make a better effort to pay off the card before she went headlong into a car loan and continued charges to her account?
• How could a person who gets monthly statements not be aware of a rate change?
• How come it took her so long to do something about the exorbitant interest rate they charged her in the end?
• Why did she decide to keep this card after finding out about how the company is profiting from her ignorance?
• Why are YOU writing about this and not her?
It’s time to let go, Mom. She’s all grown up and graduated, and now it’s time to let her make her own mistakes. The rest of us have known for years about shopping for credit card rates, taking charge of our own credit, and switching when the going gets ugly with our current credit card company.
Let this be her first lesson about money and credit. To prevent her from making any more bone-headed moves in the future, lead her to the waters of Bankrate.com and The Dollar Stretcher. After that, lead her to the public library, where she can parlay herself and her degree into a successful life with a satisfying career, a fabulous portfolio, and excellent credit. She will never again be a victim of someone else’s profit motive or her own ignorance.
Today when she requested a lower rate she was given 9.99% fixed. For months they profited over her lack of vigilance, to the tune of 17% interest! And it shows that calling a creditor can indeed result in a lower rate. Her balance is now low enough that she plans to pay it off, and then use it only for purchases she will pay off the following month in order not to incur finance charges. She won't close the account because she needs the longevity of the account on her credit history. Always, let the buyer beware!"
I have to ask the following questions (as will a lot of readers, I’m sure):
• Why didn’t your daughter search for a better rate right from the get-go?
• Why didn’t she nail down the terms of her agreement, whether it was fixed or variable?
• Why didn’t she make a better effort to pay off the card before she went headlong into a car loan and continued charges to her account?
• How could a person who gets monthly statements not be aware of a rate change?
• How come it took her so long to do something about the exorbitant interest rate they charged her in the end?
• Why did she decide to keep this card after finding out about how the company is profiting from her ignorance?
• Why are YOU writing about this and not her?
It’s time to let go, Mom. She’s all grown up and graduated, and now it’s time to let her make her own mistakes. The rest of us have known for years about shopping for credit card rates, taking charge of our own credit, and switching when the going gets ugly with our current credit card company.
Let this be her first lesson about money and credit. To prevent her from making any more bone-headed moves in the future, lead her to the waters of Bankrate.com and The Dollar Stretcher. After that, lead her to the public library, where she can parlay herself and her degree into a successful life with a satisfying career, a fabulous portfolio, and excellent credit. She will never again be a victim of someone else’s profit motive or her own ignorance.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Celebrity Status Symbol Shopping
No doubt you’ve heard by now that Madonna went to Malawi to shop for children to adopt. It seems that adopting African children is all the rage among celebrities, and Madonna certainly doesn’t want to be left out—not at her age, anyway. Anything to remain relevant in the public eye!
Apparently, the parents of one tiny village lined their children up in a row for her to choose from—much like slaves were lined up and looked over by prospective buyers. One father was eager to see his daughter adopted, because his wife died the previous year, and he can no longer afford to care for her. I wonder how he afforded her care when the wife was still living, and how her death made such a difference in their income.
The Glenn Beck show asked this question: why couldn’t Madonna just write a check instead of choosing a child and breaking up the remains of a family? My answer: because you cannot wear a canceled check around your neck for public display. That Malawian child is easily visible, stands out in a crowd of white people, will still be there after the rain falls and the laundry’s done, and shows the world that Madonna (however misguided) tried to do something good in the world—probably to make up for the raunch she produced while she was young and relevant.
I don’t think changing countries, writing children’s books, and breaking up African families is going to get Madonna a place in heaven, if that’s what she’s aiming for. Maybe she’s just looking for redemption for her past video “sins.”
I feel compelled to issue this warning to Madonna for fear of what may happen to that adopted child: THIS ISN’T A PUPPY, A LIBRARY BOOK, OR SOME RECYCLING PROJECT. YOU CANNOT TAKE IT BACK, AND YOU CANNOT LET IT GO OR THROW IT AWAY WHEN YOU TIRE OF IT. YOUR “STATUS SYMBOL” CHILD WILL BE AROUND FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, LIKE IT OR NOT, EVEN WHEN THE TREND DIES OUT. ARE YOU READY FOR THAT, OR DIDN’T YOU THINK THAT FAR AHEAD?
I can only imagine what that child would be thinking while under the care of Madonna—“Why am I here? Why did she pick me? What am I suppose to do or become to show my appreciation? How long am I suppose to keep the charade up? What do I do now?”
The mind boggles. People mindlessly shop in malls, in car lots, in grocery stores, and flea markets, and don’t carry nearly as much potential for completely screwing up someone else’s psyche than people mindlessly shopping for children in impoverished nations. They may not have money, Madonna, but they have love. I think that’s what you’re ultimately shopping for—not children, but love. There’s a hole in your heart that needs filling, and it’s called regret.
This would explain your entire career of lurid lyrics and writhing around suggestively on stage while wearing risqué costumes—it was all a desperate cry for love and attention, instead of a well-disguised exercise in social commentary combined with a Fine Arts degree. You push the boundaries of good taste, but the boundaries are pushing back. Your desire for trophies is still strong, but your work no longer produces the attention and accolades it once did—so why not try a different route and adopt an African child? Surely that will get our attention!
It worked for me, but not in the way you‘d hoped. The Material Girl pushed the wrong button in me.
Trophies can be shoved into a corner, forgotten, and only need occasional dusting for maintenance. A child needs far more. You had plenty of time to make your own, but chose instead to grace the stage like a temptress on fire. Accept it and leave the innocent alone—you’re just about as bad as a pedophile when it comes to preying on children for your own satisfaction. Children are not meat—something you can choose from a line-up and pay for at the register. Go find something else to reflect your need to feel needed, for love, and the desire to rescue—don’t screw up a child whose only crime was losing his mother. It’s HIS destiny you run the risk of altering forever, for better or worse.
Dr. Phil and Rabbi Boteach would have a field day with you, as well as environmentalists with your “recycling” gesture. I sincerely doubt this child was on Craig’s List, Freecycle, or even E-bay, because it isn’t MERCHANDISE.
Money can buy love, but only for a few hours in a cheap motel. Money can buy happiness, but it won’t be long-lived. Why not go buy some American real estate instead while the market’s cooling, and generate some “love and satisfaction” for your twilight years and your current kids’ college bills? That way, nobody gets hurt but the tax man.
African children: the latest status symbol trend, the latest homage to recycling and the environment, and the perfect gift for the celebrity who has everything else. I shudder to think that Christmas is just around the corner...
Love, redemption, and responsibility begin at home—perhaps you should start there, instead of traveling all the way to Malawi in search of soul spackle. Face it--you're a limelight junkie in search of your next fix.
Apparently, the parents of one tiny village lined their children up in a row for her to choose from—much like slaves were lined up and looked over by prospective buyers. One father was eager to see his daughter adopted, because his wife died the previous year, and he can no longer afford to care for her. I wonder how he afforded her care when the wife was still living, and how her death made such a difference in their income.
The Glenn Beck show asked this question: why couldn’t Madonna just write a check instead of choosing a child and breaking up the remains of a family? My answer: because you cannot wear a canceled check around your neck for public display. That Malawian child is easily visible, stands out in a crowd of white people, will still be there after the rain falls and the laundry’s done, and shows the world that Madonna (however misguided) tried to do something good in the world—probably to make up for the raunch she produced while she was young and relevant.
I don’t think changing countries, writing children’s books, and breaking up African families is going to get Madonna a place in heaven, if that’s what she’s aiming for. Maybe she’s just looking for redemption for her past video “sins.”
I feel compelled to issue this warning to Madonna for fear of what may happen to that adopted child: THIS ISN’T A PUPPY, A LIBRARY BOOK, OR SOME RECYCLING PROJECT. YOU CANNOT TAKE IT BACK, AND YOU CANNOT LET IT GO OR THROW IT AWAY WHEN YOU TIRE OF IT. YOUR “STATUS SYMBOL” CHILD WILL BE AROUND FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, LIKE IT OR NOT, EVEN WHEN THE TREND DIES OUT. ARE YOU READY FOR THAT, OR DIDN’T YOU THINK THAT FAR AHEAD?
I can only imagine what that child would be thinking while under the care of Madonna—“Why am I here? Why did she pick me? What am I suppose to do or become to show my appreciation? How long am I suppose to keep the charade up? What do I do now?”
The mind boggles. People mindlessly shop in malls, in car lots, in grocery stores, and flea markets, and don’t carry nearly as much potential for completely screwing up someone else’s psyche than people mindlessly shopping for children in impoverished nations. They may not have money, Madonna, but they have love. I think that’s what you’re ultimately shopping for—not children, but love. There’s a hole in your heart that needs filling, and it’s called regret.
This would explain your entire career of lurid lyrics and writhing around suggestively on stage while wearing risqué costumes—it was all a desperate cry for love and attention, instead of a well-disguised exercise in social commentary combined with a Fine Arts degree. You push the boundaries of good taste, but the boundaries are pushing back. Your desire for trophies is still strong, but your work no longer produces the attention and accolades it once did—so why not try a different route and adopt an African child? Surely that will get our attention!
It worked for me, but not in the way you‘d hoped. The Material Girl pushed the wrong button in me.
Trophies can be shoved into a corner, forgotten, and only need occasional dusting for maintenance. A child needs far more. You had plenty of time to make your own, but chose instead to grace the stage like a temptress on fire. Accept it and leave the innocent alone—you’re just about as bad as a pedophile when it comes to preying on children for your own satisfaction. Children are not meat—something you can choose from a line-up and pay for at the register. Go find something else to reflect your need to feel needed, for love, and the desire to rescue—don’t screw up a child whose only crime was losing his mother. It’s HIS destiny you run the risk of altering forever, for better or worse.
Dr. Phil and Rabbi Boteach would have a field day with you, as well as environmentalists with your “recycling” gesture. I sincerely doubt this child was on Craig’s List, Freecycle, or even E-bay, because it isn’t MERCHANDISE.
Money can buy love, but only for a few hours in a cheap motel. Money can buy happiness, but it won’t be long-lived. Why not go buy some American real estate instead while the market’s cooling, and generate some “love and satisfaction” for your twilight years and your current kids’ college bills? That way, nobody gets hurt but the tax man.
Love, redemption, and responsibility begin at home—perhaps you should start there, instead of traveling all the way to Malawi in search of soul spackle. Face it--you're a limelight junkie in search of your next fix.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Memo to Old-Line Feminists
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Appearing on the Colbert Report doesn’t help your cause.
Resurrecting the glory days of thirty years ago doesn’t do anything for anyone but you. The women you’re trying to reach weren’t even born during your heyday, and they found doors already opened upon adulthood, so your somewhat-softened podium pounding is falling on deaf ears.
I was a toddler when you were in your prime protestations, and I want to tell you something: the fight is over, and you won. We have the freedom to go wherever we want, and make a living wherever we want, AS LONG AS WE’RE QUALIFIED TO BE THERE.
You did us a grave injustice by insisting on government-sponsored entitlement programs to usher us into our own. By doing so, you have shown the world that you felt your kind was unable to compete on its own, and needed Uncle Sam’s help for making any kind of progress in the working world. How DARE you insult us so!
Well, here it is 2006, and we have the accomplishments of such greats as Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, Carly Fiorina, Condoleezza Rice, Madeline Albright, Margaret Thatcher, Sally Ride, Anousheh Anshari (the first woman space tourist), Christiane Amanpour, countless congresswomen, numerous female foreign heads of state, countless female state governors and legislators (even in Iraq), one (down from two) female member of the Supreme Court, and countless other unnamed women to use as examples of achievement, some of which wouldn’t have gotten as far as they did without entitlements—how much more do you want?
We have women in combat positions in the Air Force, women aboard navy ships, women in the Army and Marines, and women in the Pentagon and Department of Defense. We have women running their own empires here and around the world, and women in space, manufacturing, engineering, and science. We also have women who choose not to be involved with the feminist idea of revolution.
Today’s woman doesn’t want any more than she is actually due—she wants to compete fairly, and not be handed a free pass. She goes to college, she lands a job, and she works her butt off JUST LIKE THE MEN. She advances through the ranks and levels by innovating, cost-cutting, streamlining, and opening up new markets JUST LIKE THE MEN. She earns more money for herself through additional skills and education, savvy salary and contract negotiation, adding to the company’s bottom line, creating more shareholder value for her company, and navigating the tax code JUST LIKE THE MEN.
So tell me where the inequality is again?
I’ll tell you: the inequality is where women try to give other women an unearned and undeserved free pass to the boardroom just because they don’t like the predominantly male faces at the table. Our schools, colleges, and corporations are full of people who clearly don’t qualify to be there, and now you want to re-insert the unqualified into positions of power and authority? I don’t think so. You old-liners are like the Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson of women’s issues—all about the establishment shake-down to supposedly defend against a perpetual gender fallacy, and making REAL victims out of invented ones with quotas that even the federal government was hoodwinked into enacting! Your whole feminist industry was built on a false premise, and that false premise serves to support untold numbers of paid torch-bearers in the name of FALLACY and pseudo-science.
If you really want to make a difference to future generations of women, start at the maternity ward—women are having babies when they clearly aren’t fit to be mothers. Unfit mothers raise children “left behind”, and those children grow to become tomorrow’s adults left behind. Be an advocate for stronger and higher education standards, so tomorrow’s women will be properly educated, skilled, and qualified to be in that boardroom, and equipped to lead us into the next century. A free ride only goes so far. Bullying your way into the public eye, through real or threatened legal action, like some sort of female Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson doesn't cut it any more--even THEY abandoned that old "shakedown" tactic. It no longer works.
Be a mentor, and model what it means to be a successful woman in today’s world. Give tomorrow’s women something to point to as an example of what can be achieved when the right foundation is put in place. The accomplished women of 2006 will be long gone by the time the next generation reaches working age, just as you were long gone in 1986 and 1996. Any idea where you’ll be in 2016, or even 2026? Will your achievements be around for them to refer to as gender successes, or will they (and you) become even more irrelevant?
Are there any statues, memorials, awards, or scholarships named for the feminists of yesteryear and their accomplishments? Is there a single thing someone can point to today, or as far ahead as 2016, that says Gloria Steinem or Eleanor Smeal did it? There’s where you need to focus your energies, my dears, instead of re-opening old wounds and trying to get them bleeding again. Jane Fonda will forever be known as “Hanoi Jane” despite her recent attempts to explain herself—and sitting astride a giant gun barrel must’ve been REAL liberating for her, and helpful to women watching back home.
We are becoming a society of button-pushers with no incentive to strive for something better—even Uncle Sam had to install the academic floor of No Child Left Behind to keep us from slipping even further down the achievement scale. You can help by being activists for a better, higher standard of educational excellence, and putting a stop to skating children becoming adult skaters, and eventually ending up at the “great skating rink” of low-wage, low- expectation jobs—especially in light of the global economy, and the huge influx of illegal immigrant “skaters” who will gladly glide for lower pay.
It wasn’t just the American playing field that got leveled, but the entire world!
If left to our own devices, we’d slip into a coma of dull minds, empty hearts, and idle hands, run over by the stampede of well-educated, highly skilled, English-speaking immigrant workers eager to make our mandated minimum wage. Welcome to the Flat World and workforce reality. If we lose electricity, we run the risk of starving to death, thanks to legions of button-pushers and the microwave oven.
The flipside to this picture is that a few generations of us learned how to do well with what we had—by exiting the workforce, we’ve become Home CEOs and have taken over money management, instilled better nutrition, health, and academic ideals into our families, helped our kids develop their talents and skills, navigated the tax code, and created ways to make incoming money work better for us through frugal living practices, careful research, careful buying, and careful tradeoffs by adjusting expectations, lifestyle, and outgo. We have all the power and authority we care to pursue. We didn’t have to go begging for it, or thrust ourselves into places where we weren’t wanted or needed.
Why kick a door down when you can OWN that door, as well as the key to unlock it?
Someday, I hope you wake up and smell the coffee…oh wait—you’re Boomers, so I’ll change that to hideously overpriced, supposedly free trade Frappacino. Does Starbucks have an AARP discount?
It must kill you to learn that plenty of women have made the conscious choice to leave the workforce and return home. They’re finding that health and lives are improved by hands-on nurturing, cooking, administrating, and delegating. I’ll add this barb: I LOVE BEING BUSY IN MY KITCHEN, AND WILL PROBABLY BE BURIED IN MY APRON!
For the record, the internet is now the great equalizer that replaced regulation, legislation, and sanction in race, gender, and intellect, meaning that we can now look things up, decide the truth for ourselves, and vote with our wallets accordingly. We have learned to work SMARTER, not HARDER, for and with our money, and wish you would too.
Resurrecting the glory days of thirty years ago doesn’t do anything for anyone but you. The women you’re trying to reach weren’t even born during your heyday, and they found doors already opened upon adulthood, so your somewhat-softened podium pounding is falling on deaf ears.
I was a toddler when you were in your prime protestations, and I want to tell you something: the fight is over, and you won. We have the freedom to go wherever we want, and make a living wherever we want, AS LONG AS WE’RE QUALIFIED TO BE THERE.
You did us a grave injustice by insisting on government-sponsored entitlement programs to usher us into our own. By doing so, you have shown the world that you felt your kind was unable to compete on its own, and needed Uncle Sam’s help for making any kind of progress in the working world. How DARE you insult us so!
Well, here it is 2006, and we have the accomplishments of such greats as Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, Carly Fiorina, Condoleezza Rice, Madeline Albright, Margaret Thatcher, Sally Ride, Anousheh Anshari (the first woman space tourist), Christiane Amanpour, countless congresswomen, numerous female foreign heads of state, countless female state governors and legislators (even in Iraq), one (down from two) female member of the Supreme Court, and countless other unnamed women to use as examples of achievement, some of which wouldn’t have gotten as far as they did without entitlements—how much more do you want?
We have women in combat positions in the Air Force, women aboard navy ships, women in the Army and Marines, and women in the Pentagon and Department of Defense. We have women running their own empires here and around the world, and women in space, manufacturing, engineering, and science. We also have women who choose not to be involved with the feminist idea of revolution.
Today’s woman doesn’t want any more than she is actually due—she wants to compete fairly, and not be handed a free pass. She goes to college, she lands a job, and she works her butt off JUST LIKE THE MEN. She advances through the ranks and levels by innovating, cost-cutting, streamlining, and opening up new markets JUST LIKE THE MEN. She earns more money for herself through additional skills and education, savvy salary and contract negotiation, adding to the company’s bottom line, creating more shareholder value for her company, and navigating the tax code JUST LIKE THE MEN.
So tell me where the inequality is again?
I’ll tell you: the inequality is where women try to give other women an unearned and undeserved free pass to the boardroom just because they don’t like the predominantly male faces at the table. Our schools, colleges, and corporations are full of people who clearly don’t qualify to be there, and now you want to re-insert the unqualified into positions of power and authority? I don’t think so. You old-liners are like the Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson of women’s issues—all about the establishment shake-down to supposedly defend against a perpetual gender fallacy, and making REAL victims out of invented ones with quotas that even the federal government was hoodwinked into enacting! Your whole feminist industry was built on a false premise, and that false premise serves to support untold numbers of paid torch-bearers in the name of FALLACY and pseudo-science.
If you really want to make a difference to future generations of women, start at the maternity ward—women are having babies when they clearly aren’t fit to be mothers. Unfit mothers raise children “left behind”, and those children grow to become tomorrow’s adults left behind. Be an advocate for stronger and higher education standards, so tomorrow’s women will be properly educated, skilled, and qualified to be in that boardroom, and equipped to lead us into the next century. A free ride only goes so far. Bullying your way into the public eye, through real or threatened legal action, like some sort of female Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson doesn't cut it any more--even THEY abandoned that old "shakedown" tactic. It no longer works.
Be a mentor, and model what it means to be a successful woman in today’s world. Give tomorrow’s women something to point to as an example of what can be achieved when the right foundation is put in place. The accomplished women of 2006 will be long gone by the time the next generation reaches working age, just as you were long gone in 1986 and 1996. Any idea where you’ll be in 2016, or even 2026? Will your achievements be around for them to refer to as gender successes, or will they (and you) become even more irrelevant?
Are there any statues, memorials, awards, or scholarships named for the feminists of yesteryear and their accomplishments? Is there a single thing someone can point to today, or as far ahead as 2016, that says Gloria Steinem or Eleanor Smeal did it? There’s where you need to focus your energies, my dears, instead of re-opening old wounds and trying to get them bleeding again. Jane Fonda will forever be known as “Hanoi Jane” despite her recent attempts to explain herself—and sitting astride a giant gun barrel must’ve been REAL liberating for her, and helpful to women watching back home.
We are becoming a society of button-pushers with no incentive to strive for something better—even Uncle Sam had to install the academic floor of No Child Left Behind to keep us from slipping even further down the achievement scale. You can help by being activists for a better, higher standard of educational excellence, and putting a stop to skating children becoming adult skaters, and eventually ending up at the “great skating rink” of low-wage, low- expectation jobs—especially in light of the global economy, and the huge influx of illegal immigrant “skaters” who will gladly glide for lower pay.
It wasn’t just the American playing field that got leveled, but the entire world!
If left to our own devices, we’d slip into a coma of dull minds, empty hearts, and idle hands, run over by the stampede of well-educated, highly skilled, English-speaking immigrant workers eager to make our mandated minimum wage. Welcome to the Flat World and workforce reality. If we lose electricity, we run the risk of starving to death, thanks to legions of button-pushers and the microwave oven.
The flipside to this picture is that a few generations of us learned how to do well with what we had—by exiting the workforce, we’ve become Home CEOs and have taken over money management, instilled better nutrition, health, and academic ideals into our families, helped our kids develop their talents and skills, navigated the tax code, and created ways to make incoming money work better for us through frugal living practices, careful research, careful buying, and careful tradeoffs by adjusting expectations, lifestyle, and outgo. We have all the power and authority we care to pursue. We didn’t have to go begging for it, or thrust ourselves into places where we weren’t wanted or needed.
Why kick a door down when you can OWN that door, as well as the key to unlock it?
Someday, I hope you wake up and smell the coffee…oh wait—you’re Boomers, so I’ll change that to hideously overpriced, supposedly free trade Frappacino. Does Starbucks have an AARP discount?
It must kill you to learn that plenty of women have made the conscious choice to leave the workforce and return home. They’re finding that health and lives are improved by hands-on nurturing, cooking, administrating, and delegating. I’ll add this barb: I LOVE BEING BUSY IN MY KITCHEN, AND WILL PROBABLY BE BURIED IN MY APRON!
For the record, the internet is now the great equalizer that replaced regulation, legislation, and sanction in race, gender, and intellect, meaning that we can now look things up, decide the truth for ourselves, and vote with our wallets accordingly. We have learned to work SMARTER, not HARDER, for and with our money, and wish you would too.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
A Nutrition Label Epiphany (L-O-N-G)
Just when I thought I knew how to decipher a nutrition label, I learn a new and very important trick regarding fats. I’m probably very late to this game, but surely ahead of many others. I'm sure Carlos Mencia has a "Dee-Dee-Dee Award" waiting for me.
Back in the good ol’ days (that would be before January 2006), nutrition labels listed every kind of fat the product contained—total fat, saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, and monounsaturated fat—but nothing about trans fats. We’d never even HEARD of them until a couple of years ago.
Now, with the FDA’s ruling that all trans fats must be listed, something on the label had to be deleted to save space. That deletion was the most important fat of all, especially in light of the current obesity epidemic: polyunsaturated fats.
If you know anything about fats, nutrition, and the current food politic dogma, this will be a head-scratcher for you—I follow the Weston A. Price philosophy when it comes to fats, because the FDA and current dogma don’t take into account the length of the fat chain. The longer and more involved the chain, the more it gets stored, and for longer periods of time. This means saturated fats are healthier for you than polyunsaturated fats, and this goes against government-sanctioned nutrition policy. Time and time again, research has proven that saturated fats have nothing whatsoever to do with heart disease or clogged arteries, yet that drum gets beaten over and over again by federally-sanctioned nutritionists and health care providers everywhere. “If the FDA doesn’t approve it, it doesn’t exist” as far as these professions are concerned. Never mind that practically ALL the FDA’s wisdom comes from federally-funded researchers—talk about conflict of interest! No independent research going on there, no-sir-ree, because we can’t handle the truth.
Anyway, back to the labels: since the 2006 rule change, all trans fats must be listed—since there is a space premium on this label, something had to be removed, and this meant the polyunsaturated listing had to go. According to the government, we’re not supposed to be concerned with them anyway, so why not just leave them out?
If you turn a product over and read its label, you will find the total fats, saturated fats, and trans fats listed, but not polyunsaturated. If you turn a bottle of oil over and read the label, every kind of fat is listed, and the different kinds off at even ad up to the total number of fats in the product. Here’s an example:
Loriva® Walnut Oil (12 oz.)
Total Fat 14 grams
Saturated Fat 2 grams
Polyunsaturated Fat 9 grams
Monounsaturated Fat 3 grams
This oil contains a total of 14 grams of fat, so we should be able to add up the individual types of fat to get 14. Sure enough, 2 + 9 + 3 = 14. All fats are present and accounted for. Since this product contains more polyunsaturated fats (bad) than saturated and monounsaturated fats (good), this is not a good oil to use. I had a hard time reconciling this, because walnuts contain Omega-3, which is good for you. Looking this up only confused me more, so I left it.
An example of better oil, but not by much, would be this:
Loriva® Garlic Oil (6 oz.)
Total Fat 14 grams
Saturated Fat 1 gram
Polyunsaturated Fat 4 grams
Monounsaturated Fat 9 grams
Again, we can add these components up and arrive at the total fat number. We also notice that there are more good fats than bad in this product, so this product is staying in the pantry until it is used up. It won’t be replaced unless I can find one with a better fat profile.
Here’s an example of a terrific oil as far as fats go:
Spectrum® Avocado Oil (8 oz.)
Total Fat 14 grams
Saturated Fat 2 grams
Polyunsaturated Fat 2 grams
Trans Fats 0 grams
Monounsaturated Fat 10 grams
Again, the individual components add up to the total fat number—all are present and accounted for. Good fats are in abundance here, and outweigh the bad fats by a wide margin. As you can see by the examples used, I make a lot of exotic salad dressings and do some serious sauteéing.
Now, let’s visit a product that isn’t oil at all and see the difference:
Desert Pepper® White Bean Dip (16 oz.)
Total fat 0.5 grams
Saturated Fat 0 grams
Trans Fat 0 grams
The first thing I noticed was the distinct lack of a polyunsaturated fat listing, and this led to my epiphany. The individual fat components do not add up to the total, so THERE ARE HIDDEN FATS IN THIS PRODUCT. Granted, in this example, those hidden fats don’t add up to a whole lot, but still. The idea of hiding fats is very objectionable to me, especially in light of the obesity problem and high numbers of people with heart problems and out-of-control blood pressure in this country.
Don’t be fooled by “feel good” foods from a health food store, either. A typical snack bar has the following fat profile:
Alpsnack™ Coconut/Pineapple/Mango with Hemp Seeds (1.5 oz.)
Total Fat 12 grams
Saturated Fat 4 grams
Trans Fats 0 grams
No other fasts are listed. We can account for a third of them, but where are the missing 8 grams of fat? Let’s ask our new sworn enemy, Polly Unsaturates. This particular product gets the fat from almonds and hemp seeds, which (come to find out) are quite high in polyunsaturated fats by themselves. The wrapper of this product says it contains “over 500 mg. of Omega-3” in each bar, but there are ways of getting your Omega-3 without all the hidden excess polyunsaturated fat. Judging by the fat profile, these bars are better for birds than humans (and even look like compressed bird food) in spite of all the claims on the wrapper!
This led me to examine my supplement collection, mainly the fish oil and flax oil caps. I began to question whether ANYTHING was good for me any more. Both labels had both kinds of fats in them, but they were in exact equal amounts, and all were listed and accounted for in the total fat grams. The good fats will cancel out the bad fats as far as body effect goes. After searching on the web for information about nuts, seeds, and polyunsaturates, I found that most of our supposed “good foods” aren’t really good foods at all—in the case of nuts and seeds, some of the OILS are good, but not the foods themselves. Olives also fall into this category—the oil is terrific, but the food is abysmally high in “bad” fats. Go figure!
Your mission for today: go to your cupboards and pantries and discover the hidden fats in your homes. Learn how to watch out for what the government and food labels AREN’T telling us, and learn how to cancel out your current “bad fats” with good ones. Just for fun and extra credit, visit a fast food outlet and read the nutrition profiles of their foods, paying particular attention to the fat and sodium numbers—they are required to provide this information to the public free of charge, either by posting it on a wall or by brochure. If what the fries are cooked in isn’t stated, ask the counter person--then look up that oil’s fat profile on the web. You may be pleasantly surprised or egregiously horrified at what you find.
If you consume any amount of polyunsaturated fats, make sure they equal the amount of good fats in the product. When it comes to bad fats, “far less than or equal to” good fats is the way to go. Be wary of what the labels DON’T tell you—just because something isn’t listed doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that we get to ignore it. Read labels carefully and try to find alternatives with healthier fat profiles. Your body will thank you for it.
Back in the good ol’ days (that would be before January 2006), nutrition labels listed every kind of fat the product contained—total fat, saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, and monounsaturated fat—but nothing about trans fats. We’d never even HEARD of them until a couple of years ago.
Now, with the FDA’s ruling that all trans fats must be listed, something on the label had to be deleted to save space. That deletion was the most important fat of all, especially in light of the current obesity epidemic: polyunsaturated fats.
If you know anything about fats, nutrition, and the current food politic dogma, this will be a head-scratcher for you—I follow the Weston A. Price philosophy when it comes to fats, because the FDA and current dogma don’t take into account the length of the fat chain. The longer and more involved the chain, the more it gets stored, and for longer periods of time. This means saturated fats are healthier for you than polyunsaturated fats, and this goes against government-sanctioned nutrition policy. Time and time again, research has proven that saturated fats have nothing whatsoever to do with heart disease or clogged arteries, yet that drum gets beaten over and over again by federally-sanctioned nutritionists and health care providers everywhere. “If the FDA doesn’t approve it, it doesn’t exist” as far as these professions are concerned. Never mind that practically ALL the FDA’s wisdom comes from federally-funded researchers—talk about conflict of interest! No independent research going on there, no-sir-ree, because we can’t handle the truth.
Anyway, back to the labels: since the 2006 rule change, all trans fats must be listed—since there is a space premium on this label, something had to be removed, and this meant the polyunsaturated listing had to go. According to the government, we’re not supposed to be concerned with them anyway, so why not just leave them out?
If you turn a product over and read its label, you will find the total fats, saturated fats, and trans fats listed, but not polyunsaturated. If you turn a bottle of oil over and read the label, every kind of fat is listed, and the different kinds off at even ad up to the total number of fats in the product. Here’s an example:
Loriva® Walnut Oil (12 oz.)
Total Fat 14 grams
Saturated Fat 2 grams
Polyunsaturated Fat 9 grams
Monounsaturated Fat 3 grams
This oil contains a total of 14 grams of fat, so we should be able to add up the individual types of fat to get 14. Sure enough, 2 + 9 + 3 = 14. All fats are present and accounted for. Since this product contains more polyunsaturated fats (bad) than saturated and monounsaturated fats (good), this is not a good oil to use. I had a hard time reconciling this, because walnuts contain Omega-3, which is good for you. Looking this up only confused me more, so I left it.
An example of better oil, but not by much, would be this:
Loriva® Garlic Oil (6 oz.)
Total Fat 14 grams
Saturated Fat 1 gram
Polyunsaturated Fat 4 grams
Monounsaturated Fat 9 grams
Again, we can add these components up and arrive at the total fat number. We also notice that there are more good fats than bad in this product, so this product is staying in the pantry until it is used up. It won’t be replaced unless I can find one with a better fat profile.
Here’s an example of a terrific oil as far as fats go:
Spectrum® Avocado Oil (8 oz.)
Total Fat 14 grams
Saturated Fat 2 grams
Polyunsaturated Fat 2 grams
Trans Fats 0 grams
Monounsaturated Fat 10 grams
Again, the individual components add up to the total fat number—all are present and accounted for. Good fats are in abundance here, and outweigh the bad fats by a wide margin. As you can see by the examples used, I make a lot of exotic salad dressings and do some serious sauteéing.
Now, let’s visit a product that isn’t oil at all and see the difference:
Desert Pepper® White Bean Dip (16 oz.)
Total fat 0.5 grams
Saturated Fat 0 grams
Trans Fat 0 grams
The first thing I noticed was the distinct lack of a polyunsaturated fat listing, and this led to my epiphany. The individual fat components do not add up to the total, so THERE ARE HIDDEN FATS IN THIS PRODUCT. Granted, in this example, those hidden fats don’t add up to a whole lot, but still. The idea of hiding fats is very objectionable to me, especially in light of the obesity problem and high numbers of people with heart problems and out-of-control blood pressure in this country.
Don’t be fooled by “feel good” foods from a health food store, either. A typical snack bar has the following fat profile:
Alpsnack™ Coconut/Pineapple/Mango with Hemp Seeds (1.5 oz.)
Total Fat 12 grams
Saturated Fat 4 grams
Trans Fats 0 grams
No other fasts are listed. We can account for a third of them, but where are the missing 8 grams of fat? Let’s ask our new sworn enemy, Polly Unsaturates. This particular product gets the fat from almonds and hemp seeds, which (come to find out) are quite high in polyunsaturated fats by themselves. The wrapper of this product says it contains “over 500 mg. of Omega-3” in each bar, but there are ways of getting your Omega-3 without all the hidden excess polyunsaturated fat. Judging by the fat profile, these bars are better for birds than humans (and even look like compressed bird food) in spite of all the claims on the wrapper!
This led me to examine my supplement collection, mainly the fish oil and flax oil caps. I began to question whether ANYTHING was good for me any more. Both labels had both kinds of fats in them, but they were in exact equal amounts, and all were listed and accounted for in the total fat grams. The good fats will cancel out the bad fats as far as body effect goes. After searching on the web for information about nuts, seeds, and polyunsaturates, I found that most of our supposed “good foods” aren’t really good foods at all—in the case of nuts and seeds, some of the OILS are good, but not the foods themselves. Olives also fall into this category—the oil is terrific, but the food is abysmally high in “bad” fats. Go figure!
Your mission for today: go to your cupboards and pantries and discover the hidden fats in your homes. Learn how to watch out for what the government and food labels AREN’T telling us, and learn how to cancel out your current “bad fats” with good ones. Just for fun and extra credit, visit a fast food outlet and read the nutrition profiles of their foods, paying particular attention to the fat and sodium numbers—they are required to provide this information to the public free of charge, either by posting it on a wall or by brochure. If what the fries are cooked in isn’t stated, ask the counter person--then look up that oil’s fat profile on the web. You may be pleasantly surprised or egregiously horrified at what you find.
If you consume any amount of polyunsaturated fats, make sure they equal the amount of good fats in the product. When it comes to bad fats, “far less than or equal to” good fats is the way to go. Be wary of what the labels DON’T tell you—just because something isn’t listed doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that we get to ignore it. Read labels carefully and try to find alternatives with healthier fat profiles. Your body will thank you for it.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Cavalcade of Risk #10
What’s on the roster for this edition:
Economics
Healthcare Economist writes: “This blog post summarizes how a Journal of Health Economics article uses shadow prices to ration care and maximize profits. By increasing the shadow price of a medical service (creating more restrictions to medical access) the managed care plan makes more revenue per person; on the other hand, this policy increases the probability that the patient will drop the plan. Managed care plans must weigh these tradeoffs when deciding how to best structure their medical service provision.”
Finance
Firefinance brings us a peek at Dilbert’s one-page personal finance guide —a fast and funny read for those on the go. I love it when an engineer dismantles stuff to the basic components! Trackback
The Professional Wealth Management blog weighs in with this post about how your investment mix affects your risk. Diversity does have its benefits!
This entry I could not read, let alone access directly:
Forexblog.com’s entry. The article I found in Google of the same name accesses a PDF file entitled “Leverage is Not Even a Double-Edged Sword” and worth a read anyway. If this is not the article to be referenced, please resubmit it to the next Cavalcade with a more accurate URL. All I got was a page filled with undecipherable computer code.
Insurance
Specialty Insurance Blog asks this question: Do our clients want us in the insurance business or the risk management business?
Did you know magicians play a role in presenting the concept of “affordable insurance for all”? InsureBlog tells us how.
Health
A Hearty Life puts to rest the myth that canola oil is a poisonous derivative of rapeseed, and can be beneficial in lowering heart disease risk. Trackback
~A Wenchypoo article about fats and a label-reading epiphany is soon to be released. ~
We may be part of The Pepsi Generation, but Pinoyhack tells us that women should take it easy on the “soda.” Turns out, it can lead to osteoporosis.
Trackback
~Wenchypoo adds: independent studies show that carbonization erodes bone tissue from the body, and that female facial bones are the fastest-eroding—it doesn’t help that those osteoporosis drugs pull calcium out of the face and deposit it into the body, leading to a condition called “fossy jaw.” She also says that osteoporosis is NOT a calcium issue, but rather tied to estrogen loss, so loading up on calcium after menopause is a waste of time, money, and minerals. Prevention strategy: put down those carbonated drinks and load up on calcium while you’re young and still producing estrogen—that includes you too, guys.~
Surging Waves warns diabetics who don’t keep up their daily regimen of medicines and diet. Believe it or not, there are diabetics who DON’T take their meds. What they may not realize is how that can affect their health in other ways, as well. The risks of dying from such risky behavior have been put at over 50%.
~Wenchypoo begs: please PLEASE don’t use the Wilford Brimley way of getting your meds unless you have no other choice—Medicare gets billed about five times what those supplies go for at warehouse club pharmacies in generic version. All those mail-to-your-home companies use name-brand supplies at horrendous cost to Medicare, and they send a new meter twice every year, whether you need it or not (as part of the drug company product promotion program). When my father-in-law died, he was hip-deep in overstock of his supplies (which got donated to a free clinic), and I got a look at a packing slip—a big YIKES indeed, compared to what I pay for my cat’s diabetic supplies at my local Sam’s Club. And we all sit around wondering why Medicare is headed over a cliff…~
Dr. Kavokin at RDr.com sends in this entry about head injuries. “Head injuries may lead to increase in suicides, divorces, unemployment, and substance abuse.” Trackback
Business
SourcingInnovation says: Maintaining your business after a catastrophe (like Katrina) isn’t difficult, but requires some planning. Business Continuity Planning is one of the best ways to manage risk in such circumstances. Trackback
Miscellaneous
While this may not be in keeping with the Cavalcade traditions, I’m adding an extra two cents of information found elsewhere in my web travels:
Book recommendation--The Politics of Disaster
The Dollar Stretcher contains this helpful article on replacement-value insurance.
Bankrate.com has this article on the risks and rewards of person-to-person lending.
Thank you for your submissions and your patience while wading through my very first carnival hosting. The Cavalcade torch will now be passed to Hill’s Personal Finance.
Economics
Healthcare Economist writes: “This blog post summarizes how a Journal of Health Economics article uses shadow prices to ration care and maximize profits. By increasing the shadow price of a medical service (creating more restrictions to medical access) the managed care plan makes more revenue per person; on the other hand, this policy increases the probability that the patient will drop the plan. Managed care plans must weigh these tradeoffs when deciding how to best structure their medical service provision.”
Finance
Firefinance brings us a peek at Dilbert’s one-page personal finance guide —a fast and funny read for those on the go. I love it when an engineer dismantles stuff to the basic components! Trackback
The Professional Wealth Management blog weighs in with this post about how your investment mix affects your risk. Diversity does have its benefits!
This entry I could not read, let alone access directly:
Forexblog.com’s entry. The article I found in Google of the same name accesses a PDF file entitled “Leverage is Not Even a Double-Edged Sword” and worth a read anyway. If this is not the article to be referenced, please resubmit it to the next Cavalcade with a more accurate URL. All I got was a page filled with undecipherable computer code.
Insurance
Specialty Insurance Blog asks this question: Do our clients want us in the insurance business or the risk management business?
Did you know magicians play a role in presenting the concept of “affordable insurance for all”? InsureBlog tells us how.
Health
A Hearty Life puts to rest the myth that canola oil is a poisonous derivative of rapeseed, and can be beneficial in lowering heart disease risk. Trackback
~A Wenchypoo article about fats and a label-reading epiphany is soon to be released. ~
We may be part of The Pepsi Generation, but Pinoyhack tells us that women should take it easy on the “soda.” Turns out, it can lead to osteoporosis.
Trackback
~Wenchypoo adds: independent studies show that carbonization erodes bone tissue from the body, and that female facial bones are the fastest-eroding—it doesn’t help that those osteoporosis drugs pull calcium out of the face and deposit it into the body, leading to a condition called “fossy jaw.” She also says that osteoporosis is NOT a calcium issue, but rather tied to estrogen loss, so loading up on calcium after menopause is a waste of time, money, and minerals. Prevention strategy: put down those carbonated drinks and load up on calcium while you’re young and still producing estrogen—that includes you too, guys.~
Surging Waves warns diabetics who don’t keep up their daily regimen of medicines and diet. Believe it or not, there are diabetics who DON’T take their meds. What they may not realize is how that can affect their health in other ways, as well. The risks of dying from such risky behavior have been put at over 50%.
~Wenchypoo begs: please PLEASE don’t use the Wilford Brimley way of getting your meds unless you have no other choice—Medicare gets billed about five times what those supplies go for at warehouse club pharmacies in generic version. All those mail-to-your-home companies use name-brand supplies at horrendous cost to Medicare, and they send a new meter twice every year, whether you need it or not (as part of the drug company product promotion program). When my father-in-law died, he was hip-deep in overstock of his supplies (which got donated to a free clinic), and I got a look at a packing slip—a big YIKES indeed, compared to what I pay for my cat’s diabetic supplies at my local Sam’s Club. And we all sit around wondering why Medicare is headed over a cliff…~
Dr. Kavokin at RDr.com sends in this entry about head injuries. “Head injuries may lead to increase in suicides, divorces, unemployment, and substance abuse.” Trackback
Business
SourcingInnovation says: Maintaining your business after a catastrophe (like Katrina) isn’t difficult, but requires some planning. Business Continuity Planning is one of the best ways to manage risk in such circumstances. Trackback
Miscellaneous
While this may not be in keeping with the Cavalcade traditions, I’m adding an extra two cents of information found elsewhere in my web travels:
Book recommendation--The Politics of Disaster
The Dollar Stretcher contains this helpful article on replacement-value insurance.
Bankrate.com has this article on the risks and rewards of person-to-person lending.
Thank you for your submissions and your patience while wading through my very first carnival hosting. The Cavalcade torch will now be passed to Hill’s Personal Finance.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Celebrities Spinning Their Wheels Part III: Are We There Yet?
Well, let’s see…HIV and AIDS are taken by Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, global warming by Richard Branson and Al Gore, Democratic Party resurrection by George Soros, breast cancer awareness by just about everyone, testicular cancer awareness by Lance Armstrong, the advancement of socialism by Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte, and finally, George Clooney and Darfur…are we out of celebrities and causes yet?
Unfortunately, most of these causes are based on either alarmist pseudoscience (the preferred method of scaring individuals into donating money to a fake cause), or a horrible misunderstanding of what the problem actually is and how to cure it. Along the same lines, we have saber-rattling from the likes of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Mahmoud Whatchamacallit over in Iran—using fear to evoke sympathy and scaring individuals en masse into doing their bidding (just like at home).
Throwing money at a problem, no matter how vast the sums, never solved anything. Neither does throwing sympathy or one’s verbal weight around in the pursuit of power.
Time is also a problem-solver in the eyes of those who are equipped with reliable B-S detectors: when was the last time you heard from Al Gore, Angelina Jolie, Lance Armstrong, Bono, or Cher (with her Operation Helmet)? When was the last time we heard from Cindy Sheehan? Like the PETA protesters, they only come out of hiding when there are cameras rolling and coffers to be filled. Thank God large segments of the public have learned to ignore star-studded bleating such as this.
Large segments of the population will also learn to ignore the maniacal threats-then-public praising of the Axis of Little Evil Men: Kim Jong Il, Chavez, the Iranian president, and anyone else too short to reach the podium without a soapbox to stand on, and the resulting psychological chip on his shoulder from constantly compensating for a lack of height. World power won’t make up for it—try a pair of elevator shoes, guys.
For the third time I ask: “Where’s the follow-through?” Once the splash is made on stage, either local or global, celebrities and world leaders go strangely quiet and retreat to their own lives. Real activists try to bring about real change by working tirelessly for their cause, sometimes giving blood, sweat, and tears as well as personal fortunes. There are some feminists who have worked (needlessly, it turns out) for thirty years straight to open doors for women, whether we want them opened or not. Celebrities, it seems, are only in it for the exposure.
We’re supposed to be in it for the empathy, and of course, the donation potential. If you really look into the so-called “causes” of some celebrities, you’ll find the same occurrence: they don’t actually want to do anything personally for the cause, but they want YOU to donate, YOU to care, and YOU to contact your congressional representatives and bully them into some sort of guilt-ridden legislative action. A couple of these people actually want President Bush to step in and do something to stop violence or wholesale slaughter in certain regions—like he has that kind of power, not to mention time!
When the cameras stop rolling, and the lights are dimmed, the celebrity in question goes away and life resumes as before. Sometimes they move onto new causes, or just fade away into the woodwork until the next high-paying PR campaign. Follow-through or follow-up is rare, even for a well-monied celebrity-type. They live and die by the camera.
Meanwhile, real people are really suffering and dying, and there’s little anyone can do to reach them except those charities on the ground with established supply networks—charities who could really use your donations. Do any of these celebrities bother to help promote the good works of charities on the ground? Do any of these celebrities bother to help with ongoing PR campaigns to help raise funds all year round? No—they only come out and play when their own heartstrings have been plucked.
It’s just one more thing for the resume’. You know—the “volunteer work” line, or maybe the “hobbies and interests” line.
If you want to help those in peril around the world, ignore the pleas of celebrities and do your own charity research, then send them a check. UNICEF and other groups on the ground will let us know if we’ve reached our destination—don’t expect a lot of fanfare.
As for the League of Little Evil Leaders, our B-S detectors are on for them, too—Chavez is run by a dying Castro, and Kim Jong Il and Mr. Iran may have nukes, but they’re Russian nukes. We all know what happened at Chernobyl, and it will happen again in North Korea and the Middle East without our help or participation—nobody learned a thing. This should serve as a lesson in economic lifestyles: Socialism and Communism were brought down by the weight of their own enterprise (such a word choice!), and ego emissions won’t instill fear in the hearts and minds of rational people. Where will the follow-through come from, I wonder?
I guess it comes down to too much downtime, too many dollars, and not enough sense.
Unfortunately, most of these causes are based on either alarmist pseudoscience (the preferred method of scaring individuals into donating money to a fake cause), or a horrible misunderstanding of what the problem actually is and how to cure it. Along the same lines, we have saber-rattling from the likes of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Mahmoud Whatchamacallit over in Iran—using fear to evoke sympathy and scaring individuals en masse into doing their bidding (just like at home).
Throwing money at a problem, no matter how vast the sums, never solved anything. Neither does throwing sympathy or one’s verbal weight around in the pursuit of power.
Time is also a problem-solver in the eyes of those who are equipped with reliable B-S detectors: when was the last time you heard from Al Gore, Angelina Jolie, Lance Armstrong, Bono, or Cher (with her Operation Helmet)? When was the last time we heard from Cindy Sheehan? Like the PETA protesters, they only come out of hiding when there are cameras rolling and coffers to be filled. Thank God large segments of the public have learned to ignore star-studded bleating such as this.
Large segments of the population will also learn to ignore the maniacal threats-then-public praising of the Axis of Little Evil Men: Kim Jong Il, Chavez, the Iranian president, and anyone else too short to reach the podium without a soapbox to stand on, and the resulting psychological chip on his shoulder from constantly compensating for a lack of height. World power won’t make up for it—try a pair of elevator shoes, guys.
For the third time I ask: “Where’s the follow-through?” Once the splash is made on stage, either local or global, celebrities and world leaders go strangely quiet and retreat to their own lives. Real activists try to bring about real change by working tirelessly for their cause, sometimes giving blood, sweat, and tears as well as personal fortunes. There are some feminists who have worked (needlessly, it turns out) for thirty years straight to open doors for women, whether we want them opened or not. Celebrities, it seems, are only in it for the exposure.
We’re supposed to be in it for the empathy, and of course, the donation potential. If you really look into the so-called “causes” of some celebrities, you’ll find the same occurrence: they don’t actually want to do anything personally for the cause, but they want YOU to donate, YOU to care, and YOU to contact your congressional representatives and bully them into some sort of guilt-ridden legislative action. A couple of these people actually want President Bush to step in and do something to stop violence or wholesale slaughter in certain regions—like he has that kind of power, not to mention time!
When the cameras stop rolling, and the lights are dimmed, the celebrity in question goes away and life resumes as before. Sometimes they move onto new causes, or just fade away into the woodwork until the next high-paying PR campaign. Follow-through or follow-up is rare, even for a well-monied celebrity-type. They live and die by the camera.
Meanwhile, real people are really suffering and dying, and there’s little anyone can do to reach them except those charities on the ground with established supply networks—charities who could really use your donations. Do any of these celebrities bother to help promote the good works of charities on the ground? Do any of these celebrities bother to help with ongoing PR campaigns to help raise funds all year round? No—they only come out and play when their own heartstrings have been plucked.
It’s just one more thing for the resume’. You know—the “volunteer work” line, or maybe the “hobbies and interests” line.
If you want to help those in peril around the world, ignore the pleas of celebrities and do your own charity research, then send them a check. UNICEF and other groups on the ground will let us know if we’ve reached our destination—don’t expect a lot of fanfare.
As for the League of Little Evil Leaders, our B-S detectors are on for them, too—Chavez is run by a dying Castro, and Kim Jong Il and Mr. Iran may have nukes, but they’re Russian nukes. We all know what happened at Chernobyl, and it will happen again in North Korea and the Middle East without our help or participation—nobody learned a thing. This should serve as a lesson in economic lifestyles: Socialism and Communism were brought down by the weight of their own enterprise (such a word choice!), and ego emissions won’t instill fear in the hearts and minds of rational people. Where will the follow-through come from, I wonder?
I guess it comes down to too much downtime, too many dollars, and not enough sense.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
One Book to Stay Away From
This one: Why We Want You to be Rich: Two Men, One Message
Both these men have earned rather shady reputations in the field of real estate, according to the John T. Reed "guru rating" page--read about them here and here.
One is a poser, the other has sold himself out. Avoid both of them like the plague.
Both these men have earned rather shady reputations in the field of real estate, according to the John T. Reed "guru rating" page--read about them here and here.
One is a poser, the other has sold himself out. Avoid both of them like the plague.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Book Review: The Real Estate Millionaire
If you’ve read any “millionaire” or “real estate” books in the past, this one won’t have anything new except this one interesting tidbit: if financing a known flip project, don’t bother getting a 30-year mortgage or ARM of any kind—instead, get an interest-only mortgage and never pay a red cent in principal.
Now, let me explain. We’ve all been told and are seeing the effects of financing outside your ability to repay, but it seems to me that THIS is what those interest-only mortgages were designed for. Paying no principal at all, but only the cost of borrowing the money to secure property that’s going back up on the market makes perfect sense—provided you’re in a red-hot housing market with stable interest rates!
If you can buy a home, fix it, then flip it relatively quickly, why pay principal AND interest, when you aren’t personally invested in this house (aren’t going to stay in it)? It seems to me that an interest-only payment would be cheaper than a full-blown mortgage payment in a short-term borrowing environment (up to 90 days).
Too bad mortgage lenders aren’t telling this to their borrowers. Too bad many home buyers-slash-would-be flippers didn’t pay close enough attention to the housing market, and got caught with their ambitious pants down. In my own area, many houses sat on the market for a year, and are now up for rent—that’s what they get for trying to sell a $180k home in a bad location and a much-deflated market. Time is always of the essence, especially when money is involved.
There isn’t really much left to say about this book The Real Estate Millionaire: How to Invest in Rental Markets and Make a Fortune by Boaz and Susan Gilad, published in 2006 by McGraw-Hill. It’s all pretty much the same information you’ll see in hundreds of other books about real estate investing, and rental investing isn’t really much different—the “flip” aspect is gone, however. Investing in rentals is long-term and you’re buying “keepers.” As with other such books, it tells you how to determine keepers from the rest of the housing market, how to fix for “market equivalents”, and how to determine proper rents. Maintenance issues and whether or not to use professional property management vs. doing the land lording yourself is also covered.
The only part of this book I found useful and interesting to me was the financing tidbit mentioned above. Know your market, and know your abilities (both to renovate for resale AND to repay the note) before taking on such a risky venture.
If you haven’t delved into this genre before, Wenchypoo gives it a thumbs-up. If you read these types of books regularly, I just saved you some time and money.
Now, let me explain. We’ve all been told and are seeing the effects of financing outside your ability to repay, but it seems to me that THIS is what those interest-only mortgages were designed for. Paying no principal at all, but only the cost of borrowing the money to secure property that’s going back up on the market makes perfect sense—provided you’re in a red-hot housing market with stable interest rates!
If you can buy a home, fix it, then flip it relatively quickly, why pay principal AND interest, when you aren’t personally invested in this house (aren’t going to stay in it)? It seems to me that an interest-only payment would be cheaper than a full-blown mortgage payment in a short-term borrowing environment (up to 90 days).
Too bad mortgage lenders aren’t telling this to their borrowers. Too bad many home buyers-slash-would-be flippers didn’t pay close enough attention to the housing market, and got caught with their ambitious pants down. In my own area, many houses sat on the market for a year, and are now up for rent—that’s what they get for trying to sell a $180k home in a bad location and a much-deflated market. Time is always of the essence, especially when money is involved.
There isn’t really much left to say about this book The Real Estate Millionaire: How to Invest in Rental Markets and Make a Fortune by Boaz and Susan Gilad, published in 2006 by McGraw-Hill. It’s all pretty much the same information you’ll see in hundreds of other books about real estate investing, and rental investing isn’t really much different—the “flip” aspect is gone, however. Investing in rentals is long-term and you’re buying “keepers.” As with other such books, it tells you how to determine keepers from the rest of the housing market, how to fix for “market equivalents”, and how to determine proper rents. Maintenance issues and whether or not to use professional property management vs. doing the land lording yourself is also covered.
The only part of this book I found useful and interesting to me was the financing tidbit mentioned above. Know your market, and know your abilities (both to renovate for resale AND to repay the note) before taking on such a risky venture.
If you haven’t delved into this genre before, Wenchypoo gives it a thumbs-up. If you read these types of books regularly, I just saved you some time and money.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
An Engineer Dismantles the Food Guide Pyramid (L-O-N-G)
Warning: this is from a conversation between me and my husband—there are no known findings or resources that point to this conclusion, and it may not even be fact. I just thought the whole thing was interesting, and wanted to share it with you.
It all began with a Yahoo News story about how obesity isn’t such a big deal as long as the obese person is healthy on all other counts—blood pressure, blood sugar, lung capacity, urinalysis, etc, and was followed by a comparison to the so-called “obesity epidemic” versus the Madrid runway model ban on anyone under a certain BMI number. It made no sense—we’re supposed to be fighting fat, yet in some places, they’re actually fighting skinny! Where is the middle ground?
From there, we moved on to his test results from that day’s doctor visit—we had a long, winding conversation woven (however loosely) around a the central theme of nutrition. His doctor reported that his blood pressure was to die for (meaning fantastic), his blood sugar was excellent, and his cholesterol nearly non-existent. “Numbers—I need numbers!” was my reply. He rattled them off, and I told him what I knew of baselines old and new. The new baseline for cholesterol was 140, the new blood pressure goal was 116/55, and the new blood sugar number was anything less than 100. We both remarked about how low these baseline numbers had gotten in light of the so-called obesity epidemic, and this led to a new twist in the conversation.
I was briefly surprised at his cholesterol number, because we eat tacos with pork lard-fried tortillas at least once a week, if not more, and I bake with coconut oil. So much for the saturated fat scare!
The comparison of old and new baseline establishments introduced the idea of a “fudge factor”—that’s engineer-speak for “room for error.” By lowering what used to be perfectly acceptable benchmarks of good health, any overages would be caught in the “fudge factor”—good health would be maintained even though the new benchmarks were breached, deceiving the patient into thinking he/she could and should do better.
This inevitably led to the inclusion of calorie intake and the Food Guide pyramid. Hubby says that since food policy is formed by the government, and he works for the government (but in a different capacity), there is about a 90% “fudge factor” built into every set of guidelines and benchmarks established by this entity. The USRDA allowances, for example, are a known minimum establishment of what it would take to keep a person alive, but not necessarily in good health. We carried this one step further and applied it to the Food Guide Pyramid—especially in the “caloric intake” department. Where is it carved in stone that 2000 calories a day is THE magic number for an average adult? Where is it carved in stone that the Food Guide Pyramid is the last word on what amounts of what nutrients makes up a healthy diet, and for whom?
We then began a list of all the things we’re “supposed” to eat every day according to the guidelines—all the ½ cup servings of all the food groups in a day for one individual. Hubby asked me if I knew how many calories it added up to, and I replied that I didn’t know for sure. “Fruits and veggies are mainly water, and don’t have many calories at all,” I replied, “but the rest of it would depend on the choices within the food groups.”
A quick mental tally, however incorrect, gave us the impression that if someone were to follow the Pyramid to the letter each day, the caloric intake would probably be more than the established 2000 calories per day, most of it in starch form.
Here’s where it got interesting for me: one of my formerly-owned metabolism books included a quiz on how many calories it would take to maintain my current BMI. My end result was 437—far less than a starvation diet of 1200 calories, or what was established again by our own government as a Third World starvation diet intake.
I connected the dots from here, wondering if the entire Food Guide Pyramid and the whole recommended caloric intake baseline number weren’t plagued by the 90% “fudge factor.” If this is the case, we’re ALL consuming way more calories than we need to, and the result is this government-induced obesity epidemic. I know personally that neither one of us could eat all the supposedly-required amounts of food they recommend each day, and I’ve compensated for this in my own way: instead of five servings of fruits AND five servings of vegetables, I make a huge and varied salad with mixed baby greens or spring mix as the base, and add fruits and vegetables to it—one big serving of a multitude of fruits, vegetables, and greens all in one shot. We have this with dinner, the next day’s lunch, and I even have some for breakfast on occasion.
This salad is my junk food.
As much of it as we consume in a 24-hour period, it doesn’t add up to many calories by itself. Alas, we do eat meat, but the meat is no longer the main star on the plate.
If the “fudge factor” was applied to the 2000 calorie intake number, it would subtract 1800 calories off that number, leaving us with 200 calories. Compared to my recommended “maintenance” BMI intake of 437 calories, this would probably make me lose weight…or worse. I would definitely have to become a vegetarian to do this, and maybe go so far as to live on nothing but water. I am not a rotund person, as most newscasts depict obese individual on TV, but I am thick from head to toe, and am too short for my weight according to the BMI chart.
But the BMI chart cannot tell the difference between muscle and fat, so I’ll leave that alone.
Later that evening, I thought more about this ‘fudge factor” and what else it could be applied to in government terms, such as contract bids and overruns—could it be that this 90% “fudge factor” is built into each and every contract for bid, making cost overruns and time overruns baked into the cake, or an insignificant part of the project estimate? Is it possible that all the ballyhooing everyone does about overruns, fraud, waste, and abuse is really all for naught, and that the government added this “fudge factor” into the original plans? Lastly, what if a contractor comes in on time and under budget—does the regained money go into the “pork barrel” for redistribution? Is that where “pork barrel” monies come from?
The next day, I mentally returned to the Food Guide pyramid and wondered if all those “recommended servings” were yet another “fudge factor” to establish a false ceiling of what we SHOULD eat as opposed to what we NEED to eat for optimal health. If we were to apply that 90% reduction to each food group in the Pyramid, we’d get something closer to human proportions of food to be consumed each day (perhaps for sedentary people)—at least MY stomach tells me that!
Hubby has what has been called a “hiatal hernia”—part of his stomach slipped down into his diaphragm—and there is no known fix for this. If he overeats, it causes a weird attack similar to a gall bladder attack, and it recently has taken even less food than usual to fill him up, so I suppose even more of his stomach has slipped down. If I were to feed him the recommended 2000 calories a day, he’d be in the hospital getting his stomach pumped from overeating. To this day, he eats about a third what a normal man his age and size would eat, and he gets plenty full—there is no weight loss here, making me wonder some more about the recommended calorie intake number and the “fudge factor.” I also wonder if this is Nature’s version of stomach stapling.
I’ve already dismantled the salt and sodium intake numbers in a past article, and proved that the magic number of 21-hundred-whatever is dead wrong, and that 500 is the absolute minimum for electrolyte balance. Adding back the 90% “fudge factor” doesn’t come to 21-hundred-whatever, though—only 950. Still, it’s enough to make you wonder.
The idea topic was wrapped up a few days later when I introduced the twist of food politics into the Pyramid mix. I always figured that the food groups and their serving amounts had more to do with political pandering to farmers than it did for actual nutrition, because the basic information hadn’t changed much since the first guidelines were established—only the graphics and marketing have changed. Hubby said not to assume a conspiracy when something simpler can explain things, and said that 5 servings of something has a 90% “fudge factor” of 4.5, so the real amounts we’d need to consume daily is about a tenth of what the food groups and Pyramid tell us.
Speaking of conspiratorial thoughts, wouldn’t it be a riot if our so-called “obesity epidemic” was one of our own government’s making? It wouldn’t surprise me if this went hand-in-hand with the medical establishment’s lack of practicing optimal nutrition for preventative health care just to get Uncle Sam out of having to cut more Social Security checks. Are we literally being engineered to death by our own government? One wonders.
Meanwhile, I’m going to continue employing what I call the “No Child Left Behind” rule of health: I’ll keep eating to improve my test scores, since they are what truly matter in the end. Blanket guidelines don’t have anything to do with ME and my individual needs, and they don’t have anything to do with you as an individual, either. As long as my doctor’s happy, it doesn’t matter what society, the mirror, or some flawed BMI chart says!
It all began with a Yahoo News story about how obesity isn’t such a big deal as long as the obese person is healthy on all other counts—blood pressure, blood sugar, lung capacity, urinalysis, etc, and was followed by a comparison to the so-called “obesity epidemic” versus the Madrid runway model ban on anyone under a certain BMI number. It made no sense—we’re supposed to be fighting fat, yet in some places, they’re actually fighting skinny! Where is the middle ground?
From there, we moved on to his test results from that day’s doctor visit—we had a long, winding conversation woven (however loosely) around a the central theme of nutrition. His doctor reported that his blood pressure was to die for (meaning fantastic), his blood sugar was excellent, and his cholesterol nearly non-existent. “Numbers—I need numbers!” was my reply. He rattled them off, and I told him what I knew of baselines old and new. The new baseline for cholesterol was 140, the new blood pressure goal was 116/55, and the new blood sugar number was anything less than 100. We both remarked about how low these baseline numbers had gotten in light of the so-called obesity epidemic, and this led to a new twist in the conversation.
I was briefly surprised at his cholesterol number, because we eat tacos with pork lard-fried tortillas at least once a week, if not more, and I bake with coconut oil. So much for the saturated fat scare!
The comparison of old and new baseline establishments introduced the idea of a “fudge factor”—that’s engineer-speak for “room for error.” By lowering what used to be perfectly acceptable benchmarks of good health, any overages would be caught in the “fudge factor”—good health would be maintained even though the new benchmarks were breached, deceiving the patient into thinking he/she could and should do better.
This inevitably led to the inclusion of calorie intake and the Food Guide pyramid. Hubby says that since food policy is formed by the government, and he works for the government (but in a different capacity), there is about a 90% “fudge factor” built into every set of guidelines and benchmarks established by this entity. The USRDA allowances, for example, are a known minimum establishment of what it would take to keep a person alive, but not necessarily in good health. We carried this one step further and applied it to the Food Guide Pyramid—especially in the “caloric intake” department. Where is it carved in stone that 2000 calories a day is THE magic number for an average adult? Where is it carved in stone that the Food Guide Pyramid is the last word on what amounts of what nutrients makes up a healthy diet, and for whom?
We then began a list of all the things we’re “supposed” to eat every day according to the guidelines—all the ½ cup servings of all the food groups in a day for one individual. Hubby asked me if I knew how many calories it added up to, and I replied that I didn’t know for sure. “Fruits and veggies are mainly water, and don’t have many calories at all,” I replied, “but the rest of it would depend on the choices within the food groups.”
A quick mental tally, however incorrect, gave us the impression that if someone were to follow the Pyramid to the letter each day, the caloric intake would probably be more than the established 2000 calories per day, most of it in starch form.
Here’s where it got interesting for me: one of my formerly-owned metabolism books included a quiz on how many calories it would take to maintain my current BMI. My end result was 437—far less than a starvation diet of 1200 calories, or what was established again by our own government as a Third World starvation diet intake.
I connected the dots from here, wondering if the entire Food Guide Pyramid and the whole recommended caloric intake baseline number weren’t plagued by the 90% “fudge factor.” If this is the case, we’re ALL consuming way more calories than we need to, and the result is this government-induced obesity epidemic. I know personally that neither one of us could eat all the supposedly-required amounts of food they recommend each day, and I’ve compensated for this in my own way: instead of five servings of fruits AND five servings of vegetables, I make a huge and varied salad with mixed baby greens or spring mix as the base, and add fruits and vegetables to it—one big serving of a multitude of fruits, vegetables, and greens all in one shot. We have this with dinner, the next day’s lunch, and I even have some for breakfast on occasion.
This salad is my junk food.
As much of it as we consume in a 24-hour period, it doesn’t add up to many calories by itself. Alas, we do eat meat, but the meat is no longer the main star on the plate.
If the “fudge factor” was applied to the 2000 calorie intake number, it would subtract 1800 calories off that number, leaving us with 200 calories. Compared to my recommended “maintenance” BMI intake of 437 calories, this would probably make me lose weight…or worse. I would definitely have to become a vegetarian to do this, and maybe go so far as to live on nothing but water. I am not a rotund person, as most newscasts depict obese individual on TV, but I am thick from head to toe, and am too short for my weight according to the BMI chart.
But the BMI chart cannot tell the difference between muscle and fat, so I’ll leave that alone.
Later that evening, I thought more about this ‘fudge factor” and what else it could be applied to in government terms, such as contract bids and overruns—could it be that this 90% “fudge factor” is built into each and every contract for bid, making cost overruns and time overruns baked into the cake, or an insignificant part of the project estimate? Is it possible that all the ballyhooing everyone does about overruns, fraud, waste, and abuse is really all for naught, and that the government added this “fudge factor” into the original plans? Lastly, what if a contractor comes in on time and under budget—does the regained money go into the “pork barrel” for redistribution? Is that where “pork barrel” monies come from?
The next day, I mentally returned to the Food Guide pyramid and wondered if all those “recommended servings” were yet another “fudge factor” to establish a false ceiling of what we SHOULD eat as opposed to what we NEED to eat for optimal health. If we were to apply that 90% reduction to each food group in the Pyramid, we’d get something closer to human proportions of food to be consumed each day (perhaps for sedentary people)—at least MY stomach tells me that!
Hubby has what has been called a “hiatal hernia”—part of his stomach slipped down into his diaphragm—and there is no known fix for this. If he overeats, it causes a weird attack similar to a gall bladder attack, and it recently has taken even less food than usual to fill him up, so I suppose even more of his stomach has slipped down. If I were to feed him the recommended 2000 calories a day, he’d be in the hospital getting his stomach pumped from overeating. To this day, he eats about a third what a normal man his age and size would eat, and he gets plenty full—there is no weight loss here, making me wonder some more about the recommended calorie intake number and the “fudge factor.” I also wonder if this is Nature’s version of stomach stapling.
I’ve already dismantled the salt and sodium intake numbers in a past article, and proved that the magic number of 21-hundred-whatever is dead wrong, and that 500 is the absolute minimum for electrolyte balance. Adding back the 90% “fudge factor” doesn’t come to 21-hundred-whatever, though—only 950. Still, it’s enough to make you wonder.
The idea topic was wrapped up a few days later when I introduced the twist of food politics into the Pyramid mix. I always figured that the food groups and their serving amounts had more to do with political pandering to farmers than it did for actual nutrition, because the basic information hadn’t changed much since the first guidelines were established—only the graphics and marketing have changed. Hubby said not to assume a conspiracy when something simpler can explain things, and said that 5 servings of something has a 90% “fudge factor” of 4.5, so the real amounts we’d need to consume daily is about a tenth of what the food groups and Pyramid tell us.
Speaking of conspiratorial thoughts, wouldn’t it be a riot if our so-called “obesity epidemic” was one of our own government’s making? It wouldn’t surprise me if this went hand-in-hand with the medical establishment’s lack of practicing optimal nutrition for preventative health care just to get Uncle Sam out of having to cut more Social Security checks. Are we literally being engineered to death by our own government? One wonders.
Meanwhile, I’m going to continue employing what I call the “No Child Left Behind” rule of health: I’ll keep eating to improve my test scores, since they are what truly matter in the end. Blanket guidelines don’t have anything to do with ME and my individual needs, and they don’t have anything to do with you as an individual, either. As long as my doctor’s happy, it doesn’t matter what society, the mirror, or some flawed BMI chart says!
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
**ATTENTION ALL CAT OWNERS**
Please PLEASE don't feed your cat any commercial foods containing leafy greens, vegetables, or grains of any kind--even soy. Cats are OBLIGATE CARNIVORES and cannot digest them!
I just came back from taking my own diabetic cat to the vet for a blood glucose check, and saw the most pathetic sight imaginable for that hour of the morning: a very sickly -looking constipated cat, unable to eat anything because it was blocked from stem to stern, yet starving because it hadn't eaten anything real for days. The owner was feeding one of these "feel good" foods loaded with greens and vegetables, and the poor cat suffered as a result.
Leafy greens have become the new cheap filler in animal foods, and where do you suppose all that E. coli-tainted spinach will wind up after the FDA gets through with it? That's right--the pet food chain.
People will spend hours on the web looking up loan rates, car insurance quotes, and porn, but don't bother to read about their own pets and how to properly care for them. For real good information on cat nutrition, look here and here.
Don't make me watch your pet needlessly suffering in the back room while blood is being drawn out of my cat.
I just came back from taking my own diabetic cat to the vet for a blood glucose check, and saw the most pathetic sight imaginable for that hour of the morning: a very sickly -looking constipated cat, unable to eat anything because it was blocked from stem to stern, yet starving because it hadn't eaten anything real for days. The owner was feeding one of these "feel good" foods loaded with greens and vegetables, and the poor cat suffered as a result.
Leafy greens have become the new cheap filler in animal foods, and where do you suppose all that E. coli-tainted spinach will wind up after the FDA gets through with it? That's right--the pet food chain.
People will spend hours on the web looking up loan rates, car insurance quotes, and porn, but don't bother to read about their own pets and how to properly care for them. For real good information on cat nutrition, look here and here.
Don't make me watch your pet needlessly suffering in the back room while blood is being drawn out of my cat.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Maintenance Makes Up for Low Price
From a past Dollar Stretcher Outrage: “My almost new Timex Indiglo digital watch's battery failed, so off I went to get a replacement. I figured on a $3-8 battery replacement. But Timex has made it impossible for the consumer or the salespeople at the jewelry counter to replace the battery, so the store told me I'd have to do it myself. Timex wants you to send it to them, for $20 plus S&H they will replace the battery and send the watch back. It is not possible to do a battery change; the watch breaks ($50-70 watch). I threw away the broken into pieces watch and bought a replacement for $19 - And it is not a Timex. Their poor design has cost them a customer of 40 years.”
Welcome to the world of Maintenance Makes Up the Difference: car manufacturers do this as a matter of course, and so do retailers of any stripe. Ever wonder why imported cars cost more than local ones? They have a longer lifespan between maintenance periods, that’s why. This means you pay more upfront for the car and less in maintenance over the life of ownership—God help you if crash somewhere and need replacement body parts, because the cash register starts ringing up quickly in lofty amounts.
In the case of the angered watch owner, there is one more piece of the puzzle: battery life. Anything that comes with a battery, and batteries themselves, may have been sitting in warehouses and on store shelves for God knows how long—that battery may already be dead when the item is bought. Worse—in emergency season (hurricanes, tornados, etc.), when consumers are most likely to load up on batteries and battery-requiring items, they are potentially in for the biggest rip-off of their lives: dead batteries fresh out of the pack. There’s really nothing anyone can do about this besides storm back to the store and demand a refund or replacement (of more dead batteries).
In the case of the Timex watch, it’s apparent that Timex needed a new revenue stream. Since just about anyone with jeweler’s screwdriver can open the back of a watch, and department stores sell these services, Timex figured it could shroud their product in mysterious new “specialized” maintenance by asking the consumer to return the watch—at his expense—to them for a simple battery change. What better way to accomplish this than a newfangled way of extracting the old battery, which only Timex can do? Just when you think you’ve already paid for that watch once, Timex makes you take a licking and keep on paying.
First you buy the watch. Then you buy the watch again every time you need to change batteries, either by sending it back to them at over $20 a pop, or just buying a whole new watch as the customer above did. Either way, you’re out a whole lot more than the cost of a DIY replacement battery. Nice little racket Timex has going!
Now transfer this line of thinking to cars, appliances big and small, houses…just about anything you own or are thinking about owning. Carpeting comes immediately to mind—a living room can be carpeted fairly cheaply these days, due to all the “free padding and installation” offers out there, combined with the fact that all carpets come from recycled plastics. You pay one price to have it done, and think that’s it—then come the kids, the dog, the shoes, and the requisite grape Kool-Aid spill right in front of the fireplace. Since the carpet has a 10-year warranty (meaning “lifespan”), you’d probably end up spending more in carpet cleaning supplies and labor over the life of the carpet than you did installing it in the first place! If you sell before your carpet has “expired”, then you have made more money on the deal than you can imagine: you saved maintenance costs AND replacement costs that the new homeowners will inevitably incur because the carpet isn’t “their” style. The whole process repeats itself with every house bought and sold, and the carpet makers are the ones cashing in.
Perhaps now would be a good time for someone to examine (or re-examine) leases vs. owning when it comes to cars. But I digress…
This is why thinking long-term is so important. The initial flash-and-cash from the showcase to the register fades quickly when maintenance costs are added to the sales price. Impulse buying will always get you in the end, and leave you with nothing but buyer’s remorse. This is what keeps places like Jiffy Lube in business, despite having been publicly outed for ripping people off—everyone wants a car, but no one wants to pay for decent maintenance. People diligently shop for the best loan rates, pay showroom prices, then complain about the cost of dealer-performed oil changes and tune-ups. There never will be any such thing as a “forever” car—one that can go forever without a tune-up or oil change.
Maintenance costs should be diligently looked up just as much as financing or availability. This will be your hidden cost.
Welcome to the world of Maintenance Makes Up the Difference: car manufacturers do this as a matter of course, and so do retailers of any stripe. Ever wonder why imported cars cost more than local ones? They have a longer lifespan between maintenance periods, that’s why. This means you pay more upfront for the car and less in maintenance over the life of ownership—God help you if crash somewhere and need replacement body parts, because the cash register starts ringing up quickly in lofty amounts.
In the case of the angered watch owner, there is one more piece of the puzzle: battery life. Anything that comes with a battery, and batteries themselves, may have been sitting in warehouses and on store shelves for God knows how long—that battery may already be dead when the item is bought. Worse—in emergency season (hurricanes, tornados, etc.), when consumers are most likely to load up on batteries and battery-requiring items, they are potentially in for the biggest rip-off of their lives: dead batteries fresh out of the pack. There’s really nothing anyone can do about this besides storm back to the store and demand a refund or replacement (of more dead batteries).
In the case of the Timex watch, it’s apparent that Timex needed a new revenue stream. Since just about anyone with jeweler’s screwdriver can open the back of a watch, and department stores sell these services, Timex figured it could shroud their product in mysterious new “specialized” maintenance by asking the consumer to return the watch—at his expense—to them for a simple battery change. What better way to accomplish this than a newfangled way of extracting the old battery, which only Timex can do? Just when you think you’ve already paid for that watch once, Timex makes you take a licking and keep on paying.
First you buy the watch. Then you buy the watch again every time you need to change batteries, either by sending it back to them at over $20 a pop, or just buying a whole new watch as the customer above did. Either way, you’re out a whole lot more than the cost of a DIY replacement battery. Nice little racket Timex has going!
Now transfer this line of thinking to cars, appliances big and small, houses…just about anything you own or are thinking about owning. Carpeting comes immediately to mind—a living room can be carpeted fairly cheaply these days, due to all the “free padding and installation” offers out there, combined with the fact that all carpets come from recycled plastics. You pay one price to have it done, and think that’s it—then come the kids, the dog, the shoes, and the requisite grape Kool-Aid spill right in front of the fireplace. Since the carpet has a 10-year warranty (meaning “lifespan”), you’d probably end up spending more in carpet cleaning supplies and labor over the life of the carpet than you did installing it in the first place! If you sell before your carpet has “expired”, then you have made more money on the deal than you can imagine: you saved maintenance costs AND replacement costs that the new homeowners will inevitably incur because the carpet isn’t “their” style. The whole process repeats itself with every house bought and sold, and the carpet makers are the ones cashing in.
Perhaps now would be a good time for someone to examine (or re-examine) leases vs. owning when it comes to cars. But I digress…
This is why thinking long-term is so important. The initial flash-and-cash from the showcase to the register fades quickly when maintenance costs are added to the sales price. Impulse buying will always get you in the end, and leave you with nothing but buyer’s remorse. This is what keeps places like Jiffy Lube in business, despite having been publicly outed for ripping people off—everyone wants a car, but no one wants to pay for decent maintenance. People diligently shop for the best loan rates, pay showroom prices, then complain about the cost of dealer-performed oil changes and tune-ups. There never will be any such thing as a “forever” car—one that can go forever without a tune-up or oil change.
Maintenance costs should be diligently looked up just as much as financing or availability. This will be your hidden cost.
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