Personal Finance Blog

Tips And Stories To Help You With Managing Money

Learn From Money Saving Experts

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Managing money is a lifetime skill that is learned from someone, whether it is a family member or through reading and educating yourself about it. What is interesting is that your sense of self worth actually can empower you to be better at managing your money and saving money.

According to financial expert, Suze Orman, you alone are the power behind your money management skill. You make the choices to spend, save or borrow money. What is going on in your mind is what is controlling your financial security.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D, wrote a book called The How of Happiness. She highlights five steps to happiness which can also apply to developing better money management skills.

Sonja Lyubomirsky The How of Happiness Book
The How of Happiness

Step  1 – Cultivate optimism – When you choose to believe in a future that is positive for yourself and your loved ones, you create pictures in your mind about how you want your life and your finances to be.  Optimism helps anyone get through the day. Suffering from negative thoughts is just that. You are suffering. Try everything you can think of to bring back optimism into your life.

Step 2 –  Invest In Social Connections – In your personal life, do something for someone else and continue doing random acts of kindness. In your financial life, when you make good connections with people by getting to know them and serving them, your sense of well being will improve and who knows, maybe you’ll get a referral to just the job you were dreaming about.

Step 3 – Let Go Of The Negative – If you are flooded with negative thoughts, write them down and develop some solutions to fix the problems. If you can’t stop thinking of them ask yourself, “What negative thought can I let go to make room for more happiness, more financial security, more abundance? Letting go or coming to peace with yourself that you have done everything you can to solve the problems, will bring relief and contentment. You may even come up with new ways to attack the problems you have.

Step 4 – Finding Meaning In Adversity – Everyone has gone through adversity in their lives whether it is in relationships or in their financial lives. What exactly have these experiences taught you? Have you learned from your failures? Gaining the strength to become debt free will teach you what you need to do to stay that way and give you a sense of control over your financial future.

Step 5 – Learning To Let Go – Past hurts, past mistakes, past failures are well, in the past. Over time you are better off letting go of these pains and forgiving yourself or others for their part in your personal or financial pain. Letting go of these means you have forgiven and when you forgive, your soul returns to the loving state it began with. Letting hatred and bitterness take over your life will not leave you room to grow and learn new things.

In conclusion, these five steps can help you achieve peace in your financial life and peace in your personal life. The power to control your future depends on your attitude and desire to reach your goals. As Suze Orman often says, “Self-Worth builds NET WORTH.”

How To Create A Database Using MySQL

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What is MySQL?

MySQL is a relational database management system that is used on websites like Google,  Facebook, Wikipedia, WordPress Sites, and many business sites. Many websites use MySQL and a front end system called phpMyAdmin which is made available at no charge through many web hosting companies.  PhpMyAdmin makes it easy for the end user to import large amounts of data from csv files and text files and create a database.

Who Invented MySQL?

Ulf Michael Widenius, from Finland  was the developer of MySQL and named the program after his daughter, My. It was released for the first time in 1996. Sun Microsystems purchased it on February 26, 2008, making Ulf Michael Widenius, one of the top ten money earners in Finland.

How To Create A Database

To understand how to use these tools to make your website better, you’ll need to know how to create an Excel spreadsheet file. Since Excel is so widely used, you are probably familiar with using it. You can easily see that information is basically stored in columns and rows.

Imagine that you had a physical store that sold colored balls in a variety of colors and sizes made in a variety of materials and sold at different prices. You could create a spreadsheet that contained all of this information. Each product would be put in one row. Each attribute would be listed in columns on that row. This format is what you need to create a MySQL database.

So how do you get your Excel file into the MySQL database? You will need to save this Excel file as a comma separated value file.

Log  in to your web hosting account.  Find the Database Wizard to create a database. When you create this database you’ll be given a username and password to get into it. Write that down so you’ll remember it. You will need it later.

Now you want to find the phpMyAdmin button and open that link. The screen you see will show you the database name that you just created. Click on the name of the database.

How To Create A Table

You have to create a table to hold the information you are about to import into it. The table you create will have column headings for each of the attributes you created in your spread sheet. You can have any number of columns you desire.

Find the word operations and open that link. Create the table by giving it a name and stating how many columns you want in your table. It will have to match the number of columns in your spreadsheet. Click go to create the table.

You’ll see a table that looks like an empty spread sheet. In the field column, you want to name all of the columns a single word or if you use two words, you need to join them with an underscore. Fill in all of the fields you can.

Choose a type for each column. Generally you’ll need to start with VARCHAR which allows the text to be a variety of characters. Then you’ll need to decide how big the field will be. Some fields will just be two characters and others may be up to 255. If you need more space than that to store your data, you’ll have to choose LONGTEXT. There are specific paramaters that the other columns need, but you don’t have to fill them all in. You will have to decide whether you need to have an empty field (null) or have it filled (not null).

Determine which field you want as your primary field and select that option. Usually one field needs to be primary so you may want to make that your productID which is usually unique as well.

Click go and the table gets created for you. You’ll see that you can browse your table but nothing will be in it yet.

How To Import Data Into A Table

Choose the import function in the horizontal row above the table. You’ll attach the csv file that you saved to your computer. Then you check the option CSV using LOAD DATA. You will need to change the fields terminated by a semicolon to fields terminated by a comma. That means just erase the semi colon and put a comma in place of it. Click go and your data gets imported into the new table. View your data through the browse button.

Now you have a database that has data in it. You can create as many tables as you would like to and you can also import more data by following the above steps. The information in the database is stored through your hosting company. The next thing you will want to learn is how to use the data you just put into your database. You’ll want to display the data on your website.

Free Personal Finance Tools Create Smart Data

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Gathering data and making meaningful use of it has made 30 year-old Aaron Patzer, a rich man. Aaron Patzer is the founder of the website, Mint.com which is a free personal finance site that has over 1.5 million users. It allows people to track bank transactions, credit card transactions, investments, and loan transactions online.

The site helps you find better prices on things you buy, guides you to the best credit card rewards and minimizes finance charges. It has helped people find $300 million in savings, managed $50 billion in assets and helped track $200 billion in purchases.

Security for this type of financial analysis is of utmost importance to  Mint.com. They have bank level security. They also have a “read-only” connection to financial institutions so no money can be moved and no one can drain your accounts. They have low-balance and spending alerts to help you manage your accounts and prevent identity theft or fraud.

What inspired him to create this type of site?

He found that he was spending most of his time working and had little time to track his own finances. Frustrated with how Quicken, Intuit’s financial software, worked, he decided to create his own program. He designed a way to make tracking his finances easier, quicker, and more automated. He created a business model that allowed people free use of the money management tools. From the data aggregated, they could offer suggestions on ways to save money, lower interest rates on credit cards and make better financial decisions

How did he fund the website?

Aaron had to raise venture capital money to fund the project and it was not always easy. He experienced highs and lows. Sometimes he thought his idea was the greatest thing since sliced bread and other times he questioned himself with his attempt at tackling such a big project and competing with Intuit, a $10B company. For comfort in the low phases, he often thought of a quote “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might oft win, by fearing to attempt.” Shakespeare

How does the software work?

Aaron Patzer received a license from the company, Yodlee, to use the technology that powers 85% to 90% of all the online consumer finance sites. The communication between you and your bank uses this technology.

Then, he did what he is good at. He began to work on algorithms that would take the financial data and make it useful. One algorithm was patented and contains 105 steps to have transactions labeled with appropriate categories. Other algorithms helped to make recommendations on ways that the user could save money. He now holds 11 patents on algorithms.

How did the site become so popular and successful?

When the site was first launched it won awards from The Motley Fool for the best money management tool. TechCrunch40 awarded them the hottest start up company of the year and they really began to take off. Over the next few years they received 47 awards from well know companies like, CNNmoney.com, Time.com, PC magazine, Kiplinger, the World Economic Fund, LifeHacker.com and Business Week.

What does Intuit think of Mint.com?

Intuit’s executives watched Mint.com for over a year. They became so impressed with the features of the site that the CEO of Intuit, Brad Smith approached Aaron and offered to buy the company. On November 2, 2009, Intuit purchased Mint.com for $140 million, offering Aaron the chance to be in charge of Mint.com and all Quicken online, desktop and mobile offerings, which he agreed to do.

Aaron Patzer, earned his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering, and computer science, and electrical engineering, at Duke University as well as a master’s degree in electrical engineering and algorithms from Princeton University. Some of his first work after graduation was working on a cell microprocessor, used in the PlayStation 3 and it uses three of his patents.

What is Aaron Patzer’s advice to entrepreneurs?

His best advice to other entrepreneurs is to “observe the world around you – everything you do, and especially everything you hate to do – solve a real problem and the world is yours.”

Is There A Future For The Check Printing Business?

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The check printing business has gone through hundreds of years of refining.  In the 1600’s, England began using checks as a way to eliminate the problem of carrying sacks of money. Checks did not become a popular way of conducting money transactions until the early 1900’s. By 1913, checks were widely used in the United States and by 1915, W.R. Hotchkiss had created Deluxe Check Printers, a leader in the check printing business  now called Deluxe Corporation.

Check printing business
Hundreds of Popular Check Designs

As personal checks  became more and more popular, an overwhelming problem  developed.  The process by which the checks were sorted to the correct account number was painstakingly slow and expensive.

By 1952, there were approximately  8 billion checks a year that needed to be processed. On one day alone, there could be 69 million checks requiring sorting.

Dr. Kenneth R. Eldredge of the Stanford Research Institute to the American Banking Association, came up with a solution to the problem. His solution is well known today as MICR technology, which he patented in 1961. The patent number 3,000,000 was given to him. The patent office held this number for someone who would create a significant invention and they felt that this invention was significant.

MICR stands for magnetic ink character recognition.  Dr. Eldredge used a special type of ink toner that had iron oxide in it. When the check  was passed through a magnetic machine, the iron oxide particles  became magnetized. These created patterns which were then recognizable by the magnetic reader. This allowed for matching checks to checking account numbers.

A special font was selected to use with this technology. That font can be seen in the bottom left hand corner of any bank check. The first font was called “E-13B.”  The font has ten numbers and four symbols. This has been revised five times so the letter E was used to represent that. The 13 was  used to represent .013-inch which was the design of the font. The B represents the second revision to the system.

By 1963, a standard had been set by the banking industry. The American National Standard Institute (ANSI) recognized the MICR technology and the chosen font as the one to be used on all printed checks.

Many revisions have been made over the years, but this original technology paved the way for the check business.

In the 1980’s the check business was predicted to be on the decline because of the use of electronic fund transfers. Thirty years later, the check business is still hanging in there.

Hundreds of Dog and Puppy Checks

Deluxe Corporation, recently acquired Custom Direct checks for $98 million.  Deluxe reported sales of $1.34 billion dollars in the past 12 months. They are anticipating the new purchase of Custom Direct will  increase their revenues by $60 million. They have successfully positioned their company as a leader in checks sold directly to consumers and not through financial institutions.

Although technology makes electronic funds cheaper than processing printed checks, the check printing business is still thriving in 2010. With fierce competition between VistaPrint, Walmart, Checks In The Mail, Carousel Checks and Harland Clark, it seems that Deluxe Corporation is currently the leader in this industry.

The Value of Scarcity and Uniqueness in Business

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Auctions can bring hefty prices for unique, rare items. Recently, a manual typewriter fetched the amount of $254,000.

Why the astronomical price? You may wonder about this because living in the digital age, who needs a typewriter?

Possibly similar to the sale of one of Michael Jackson’s glove, this memorabilia belonged to Cormac McCarthy, American fiction writer. From this humble looking typewriter, McCarthy typed more than 5 million words over a period of 50 years.

The Lettera 32 Olivetti Typewriter

Cormac McCarthy, born in 1933, is an American novelist and playwright sometimes compared to Faulkner. Six of his novels were made into films. Well known for his 2007, Pulitzer prize winning, work of fiction called, “The Road.”

In 2008, McCarthy was awarded the Pen/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. His work was recognized for qualities of excellence, ambition and scale of achievement during his writing career. This places him in the highest ranks of American literature.

People predicted his typewriter may go for $18K or so. Those predictions were far below the price it received. The large sum of money was donated to a scientific research organization, the Santa Fe Institute.

The qualities of uniqueness combined with scarcity can drive up the value of an item exponentially. With many competing businesses in similar niches popping up all over the web, thousands will collapse and a few will prosper. It seems to be a natural cycle of business.

If you want your Internet business to prosper, ask yourself if you have something to offer people that is both unique and scarce. The more you can meet this criteria, the better your business will do. What can you bring to the table that is different from every other company? Opportunities to create new, unique products are endless.

The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities. ~Michael Gerber