Keith Perkins--Art, Etc... » Finances

Discardia: More Life, Less Stuff

Keith — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:18:42 +0000

Sander’s 282-page book is brimming with little tips that will help you “nudge toward less awful.” Here are a few of my favorites:

* Keep a handy “charity box” for tossing in things that you don’t use but aren’t trash.

* Write down your top goals, save them as a text file, and set your web browser to display the goals as your home page.

* Instead of looking at your email when you start work for the day, spend 30 minutes on a high-priority project.

* Turn your hanging clothes around so the hooks point toward you. When you wear something, replace it on the rod by turning the hanger around (point side away). After one year, get rid of all the clothes with the hangers still pointing toward you.

Who owns America? Hint: It’s not China – BlackListedNews.com

Keith — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:51:33 +0000

The U.S. Treasury / Federal Reserve: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)

Hong Kong: $121.9 billion (0.9 percent)

Caribbean banking centers: $148.3 (1 percent)

Taiwan: $153.4 billion (1.1 percent)

Brazil: $211.4 billion (1.5 percent)

Oil exporting countries: $229.8 billion (1.6 percent)

Mutual funds: $300.5 billion (2 percent)

Commercial banks: $301.8 billion (2.1 percent)

State, local and federal retirement funds: $320.9 billion (2.2 percent)

Money market mutual funds: $337.7 billion (2.4 percent)

United Kingdom: $346.5 billion (2.4 percent)

Private pension funds: $504.7 billion (3.5 percent)

State and local governments: $506.1 billion (3.5 percent)

Japan: $912.4 billion (6.4 percent)

U.S. households: $959.4 billion (6.6 percent)

China: $1.16 trillion (8 percent)

Social Security trust fund: $2.67 trillion (19 percent)

So America owes foreigners about $4.5 trillion in debt. But America owes America $9.8 trillion.

via Who owns America? Hint: It’s not China – BlackListedNews.com.

Walmart versus Target – price comparison using a Twenty-Item Checklist

Keith — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:45:17 +0000

Woman compares 20 items at Walmart/Target. Walmart is cheaper–by less than $5 (or 4%).

Walmart versus Target – price comparison using a Twenty-Item Checklist.

You Have More Money In Your Wallet Than Bank Of America Pays In Federal Taxes

Keith — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 16:39:45 +0000

Carl Gibson:

I have one dollar in my wallet. That’s more than the combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America. That means somebody is gaming the system.

via ThinkProgress » REPORT: You Have More Money In Your Wallet Than Bank Of America Pays In Federal Taxes.

Be pissed off.

How people treat artists, and other creatives.

Keith — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:58:13 +0000

The Vendor Client Relationship

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yeah, “we’ll gladly pay Tuesday for a hamburger today”.

Via Constant Siege

Well, I wasn’t wrong after all

Keith — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:50:56 +0000

Auto Makers to Get $17.4 Billion – WSJ.com

They got more money than they asked for, with fewer strings attached, and less oversite.
Oh, and who’s the “car czar”? The guy who’s supposed to watch over all this? why, our favorite bailout maven, who’s done such a fine job with the bank bailout–none other than Henry Paulson.

Here’s Mish’s take on it: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/12/bush-wimps-out-on-autos.html

I wish someone would bail me out.

Bailout Idea

Keith — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:39:51 +0000

I’ve got an idea. Yes I do. How ’bout, instead of giving Wall Street 700 Billion Dollars, Washington, gives everyone in the US 2 Million Dollars. With a population of approximately 305,358,236 (US Census Bureau estimate), that’ll cost the gov’t less money, and, really ought to kick the economy up a notch.

Just a thought.

Financial Software for the home user and Linux

Keith — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 01:05:29 +0000

The state of financial software for everyday people on Linux is abysmal.
I’ve been using Monyedance for my finances, since I moved over to linux/Ubuntu completely 3 years ago, and am very happy with it, except for one niggling problem with dialogs lately.
The problem with Moneydance is that it is not free, either money wise, or open-source wise. (At least some people consider that a problem.) I don’t mind that I had to pay for it, or that it’s closed source, but the problems with the dialogs (which is due to it’s use of java, and will, I hope, be fixed soon).
Anyways, since I was irritated by this, I decided to look into open-source alternatives, and give them a go.
I decided against Gnucash, because it’s such a monster, and really more than any non-business individual needs.
Homebank doesn’t have the ability to do investments, at least from my reading on their website.
Grisbi doesn’t seem to be in active development, so I passed on it, although it does look nice.
So I tried KMyMoney2.
Yep I tried it, for 1 week.
First problem was importing the QIF file that I generated with Moneydance, I had to try 3 QIF profiles in KMymoney until I finally got the date format right, and it actually imported stuff. This is after making the correct accounts so that it would import the the accounts in the file, which I had to do every time, because KMM didn’t save the accounts that I made during this. (I finally smartened up, and made the accounts first–making sure they were written exactly like I had them in MD.)
OK so I imported them, and the balances didn’t match (I’m sure it’s because I used $0 as the stating balance when I made the accounts, so blame it on me, but it didn’t seem this hard when I moved from MS Money to MD, three years ago.)
So I did some adjustments, to fix things, great, everything is fine, until I look and see double transactions in several of the accounts, so I take out the duplicates, and readjust my adjustments.
OK, this is fine, now everything looks good, I’m ready to go.
So I’m going along fine for a couple of days, and things are looking good, it’s a nice looking program, and seems to be taking care of business.
Then I see that my scheduled direct transfer for my mortgage is on the wrong day. I figure no problem, I’ll just go into the schedule, and change the date we’re good, I get on with my life. A would that it were that easy. this is a loan, a mortgage, and there is no way in hell that I can change that date using the GUI. I can change everything else on that mortgage, if I want, but not that date, no way, no how. So my next step is to see if I can edit the .kmy file, which is quite easy to do actually, since it’s xml. I find where the schedules are, find the date change it to the right one, and voila, everything is fine–at least with my scheduled bills.
Then I notice that my checking account numbers are off, by about $50, and I had made no changes to my checking account. So I figure messing with the xml file messed up my account somehow. Being the smart man that I am (having learned this through the many beat downs I’ve gotten from various programs in the past.) I had made a copy, and saved the old file, so I got rid of the new one, and reinstated the old, and I was back where I started, except the checking account was still messed up.
OK, well one thing at a time. I deleted the Mortgage schedule, and then made a new one from scratch (schedule that is, I kept the mortgage account), so now that’s fine.
Next step, go through the checking account, and see if I can find out why is says there’s 50 odd dollars more in it than I really have (this is after reconciling ti by the way), and I can’t find anything. Nothing. Nada.
I open up Moneydance and plug in everything that I’d entered into KMM in the last week, and reconcile it, and everything is correct. And that is what I want.
I want accurate, easy, finances. No dicking around in a text editor changing dates for scheduling bill payments, etc. No unexplained variances in my totals. Just accurate, easy to use software.
So I’ll continue to use my proprietary, java based software, with the one minor problem of unreadable dialogs every now and then, and hope that sometime in the near future Open Source developers get their act together, and build an as good, or better product. Other OS projects can do it (GnuCash is good, it’s just way too much for what I, or any individual really needs.), I don’t get why KDevelopers can’t

Just Do It!

Keith — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 12:19:34 +0000

Found this pic out there, and liked it. I may resurrect it for Buy Nothing Day (it is a graff for last years event).
Be a maker, not a consumer.

Tired of those credit card and insurance offers?

Keith — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:20:27 +0000

Opt Out at OptOutPrescreen.com.
You can opt out from these offers either for 5 years, or permanently (by mail).
It won’t eliminate all of the offers, but according to MasterYourCard it took care of about 90% of their junk mail.
Ecological, and de-stressing.
The rest of the post at MasterYourCard is worth reading also–it’s about doing for yourself what the company LifeLock says it will do for you for $120/yr.