Posts Tagged ‘great personal finance reads’

Financial Follies: Super Bowl Middle Finger Edition!

Friday, February 10th, 2012

The Friday Financial and Health Follies (FFHF)  summarize the important (or just fun) financial and health issues of the week.

  • Share the humor of  the funny
  • Make fun of the stupid.
  • Highlight  and explain new  financial and health news-so you don’t miss it!

Friday Financial Follies

I question the 47 % number being bandied about that supposedly watched the Super Bowl. In my practice this week, I’ve yet to find a patient who said they watched the game.  I did have one admit to watching Madonna’s halftime show.  She thought it was good entertainment, but she missed “the finger” as did I.

No Super Bowl "finger" pics here, sorry!

I have to admit that I didn’t have a clue who any of the supporting cast were who sang with Madonna.  Nope, I’m not much into pop culture.

Of course, considering my practice is 100% female, I know my  survey about the game is not representative.  My urology buds may not have found anyone who didn’t watch the game if they surveyed their male patients.

The guys wouldn’t admit they watched a chick-flick instead.

But aren’t all surveys skewed these days?

The only people willing to answer a phone survey today are the unemployed or those with an agenda.  The rest of us are just too damn busy.  And how accurate are  the Nielson’s ratings with most households having multiple TV’s and more and more using tablets to watch movies and TV shows?

On second thought, it’s not worth giving a second thought…

Let’s get on with the Friday Financial Follies:

The French are better parents?

In the parenting world, the idea that French parents do a better job than American’s is raising eyebrows.  And no, it’s not because the kids drink red wine at each meal. They seem to do a better job at teaching patience and manners (a little wine couldn’t hurt). They do this by not putting the kids on a pedestal as the center of their world.  Rocket science…

Iguana: tastes like chicken?

The latest version of a  new  meat that “tastes like chicken”:  Iguana.  Puerto Rico is trying to export the non-native species to decrease it’s invasive population and bring in income.  Sounds like a win/win. Yummy.  Entrepreneurs-how bout an Iguana burger or lizard dog?

Flying blood clots:

Blood clots during airline flights are extremely rare-even in coach….  But if you are in the air more than four hours, are an obese male, or have circulatory problems you may want to talk to your Doc. about precautions.

Amazon: the retail store….really a store!

The company that’s accused of killing many brick and mortar stores, Amazon,  is going to open it’s own brick and mortar store...Go figure.

Magazines, no not about dinosaurs, they are dinosaurs…

Magazine sales fall sharply in second half of the year. With all the iPhone and Kindle sales, not really a big surprise.  My grandchildren, if I ever have any, probably won’t know what a magazine is. Can you say VHS?  Well, maybe the Sport’s Illustrated swimsuit issue will save paper magazines….

Personal Finance  and other Reads:

Money Green Life says you are dumb if you change your oil every 3000 miles.  I’m not quite so judgmental, but he’s probably right.

Are you are a loser if you are loyal to your bank/insurance provider/favorite retail establishment/employer? Yes, says Funancials.  First a dummy, now a loser!  Gosh everyone is being judgmental today…

American Debt Project   lists his getting out of debt blog post favorites.  you would think  life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness  were all involved to hear him gush! And I guess that’s his point.  It’s hard to pursue those while held in bondage to payors.    I hope to write something that moves people that way some day!

Beauty and success are analyzed by Suba at Wealth Infomatics.  And she can analyze the heck out of anything (in a good way!)

Maria at Money Principle makes her case for being the dumbest investor of all times.  She doesn’t even come close, but it is fun to read her investing story, but most important is her conclusion.  If we all could skip the being dumb part and go straight to what she learned it would save us a lot of trouble, pain,  and money.  Alas, too many of us have to learn the hard way.

The next time you see a graph or chart to illustrate a point in an article, refer back to this post to make sure the data ain’t lyin. Average Joe pulls the curtain back and shows you how they made your chicken salad from other chicken stuff…

 Carnivals and Roundups:

The Life and Business Coach Carnival

The Carnival of Financial Camaraderie

The Yakezie Carnival

The Canadian Finance Carnival

The Carnival of Retirement

Jeremy Waller’s Top Personal Finance Posts of the Week Carnival

The Wealth Builder Carnival

Festival of Frugality

Baby Boomers Blog Carnival 138th Edition

Thanks for all your hard work, carnival hosts. If we could just get Blog Carnival Submission to work….

And thanks to you readers for hangin here with me. I truly appreciate it, I truly do!

{photo credit: stephen_d_luke c.c.}

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Friday Follies: Krazy Kudzu Edition!

Friday, November 4th, 2011

The Friday Financial and Health Follies (FFHF) are designed to summarize the important financial and health issues of the week.

  •  Share the humor of  the funny.
  • Make fun of the stupid.
  • Highlight  and explain new  financial and health news-so you don’t miss anything important!

This week’s Follies have a new twist. I’ve decided to add health news to the Friday Follies.

Money and health are both big issues. And I happen to pay attention to both. A two-fer!

There is so much mis-information out there-both in health and money issues.  I will try my best to cut through the BS and the hype.  If you see what you think is an important health or financial story send me a tip.

Questions? I love answering questions!

Friday Follies:

Groupon IPO-Groupon stock begins selling today.  If you don’t know anything about IPO’s, check out this old post on the Purple Haze Condom Company going public.  It will cover all your questions!

Will you be buying shares?

Expensive Marriage-10 million for each wedded month?

A multimillion dollar wedding didn’t help this marriage-it ended in less than 100 days.  I won’t tell you who, but her initials are K.K……

Pets and your budget:

Cats, dogs, and credit cards!  The cost of vet care has increased 40% in the last decade.The recession hasn’t slowed families’ spending on their pets!

Wellness and Your Health Insurance Costs:

This is the time for changes and choices in your benefits at work.  More insurance offerings are stressing wellness plans. Many of these contain more carrots, but also sticks than in the past.

You may be required to prove you don’t smoke, are a healthy weight, and that you go for your preventive exams if you want the biggest discount or price break.  How ’bout you, any discounts for good health offered at your place of work?

Super-Beetle?

Krazy Kudzu Kingdom

Kudzu, that invasive vine you can’t kill, found throughout the south, may have met it’s match. An Asian beetle is eating it up, and no one would care except the new imported beetle also likes soybeans….and the beetle is spreading rapidly.  Increased Tofu prices anyone?

So much for cheap homemade Halloween costumes:

Heidi and Seal become monkeys for Halloween. How much did they spend  on their costume? Probably more than you or I made this week!

Hard to believe?

Remember the old story about having to wash dishes when you can’t pay for your restaurant bill?  An 8 day stay in an airport is what being unable to pay  baggage fees”cost” this person.

Alcohol and breast cancer?
Alcohol intake increases breast cancer risks in women-confirmed by another study. The risks are small, and may be balanced or even outweighed by a decrease in heart events for a one drink/day intake.  The increase in breast cancer risks are in the 15% range-which raises your 10 year risk from 3 to 3.4% if you are an average risk female. Cheers!

Are the Greeks playing too?

Angry Birds hits 500 million downloads. And they say Americans work too much….

Personal Finance Reads:

My favs this week:

How often do you check your net worth?  is the question at Retire by Forty.  I’m a distinct minority…check mine yearly.

What “percentage” are you inSo Over Debt writes a great response to the Occupy Wall Street 99% controversy.

Len Penzo gives you 9 guilt-free ways to Rip Off Your Credit Card Company!

Go tell JMoney at Budgets are Sexy,  it’s ok to buy a mattress.…For his poor back’s sake if for no other reason!

Other Great Reads:

How was your Halloween party?  I didn’t have one, though my staff did dress up at work.  Crystal has pics of her Halloween party at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff.

Fat Guy, Skinny Wallet discusses temptation.  Halloween is a tough time to be strong with all the candy around. And Thanksgiving and Christmas are around the corner. Good Luck, K.

The Financial Blogger tells the Dream Crashers to go $%^%themselves.  Tell us how you really feel, don’t hold back!

TJ at Free$Wisdom helps with automating your finances.  I agree with all of ‘em, but not sure how making your kids work helps automate anything.  One of mine worked while in high school and the other didn’t, both turned out fine.

“How much money do you make?” is the question asked of MH4C.  How would you respond?  None of your business, maybe…  What was his answer?  Go read and find out.

Roshawn is teasing us aboutDecamillionaires and money advice…@Watson Inc.  Welcome back, Roshawn!

Frugal Living gives budget setup advice.

{photocredit: robertmichalove c.c.}

What’s up with you?

What have you been reading? Let me know your favorite reads-I accept nominations!

Thanks for spending  time here.  Have a great weekend.

Don’t forget to:

Follow-Twitter-@DrDeanBurke

Like-Facebook

Circle-Google +

Link to me-at Linked In

Friend-Facebook

Don’t miss anything here-RSS

Newsletter, for special people, with my special mini-e-course on personal finance and my special  free e-book, at no extra charge-cause that’s the kinda guy I am! Don’t you want to be special?

 

 

 

 

 

Financial Follies: Sex, Cooking Oil, and Toys Are Them Edition!

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Friday Financial Follies:

The Friday Financial Follies (FFF) are designed to summarize the important financial issues of the week.

  •  Share the humor of  the FFF that are funny.
  • Make fun of the stupid.
  • Highlight those FFF you need to be aware of if you want to be financially well-grounded or is it well-rounded???

I sat in on a customer service presentation a consulting firm did for our local hospital this week.  It was amazing watching the faces of the nurses, housekeeping, maintenance and administrative staff “get” the importance of treating patients like customers.  Customers who have a  choice to go elsewhere for their healthcare. 

It is so rewarding to me to see that our facility is making huge changes towards this new reality……The health systems that don’t do this will be like the dinosaur bones in the desert, as little as 5 years from now. IMHO….

As was stressed over and over, these customer friendly attitudes have to be a way of life, an automatic response,  not just the latest pablum to be regurgitated this week ’cause the boss is looking….I’m looking forward to the journey.

This weeks news was fun to write about, hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

This weeks financial news:

Gold Phones phone home…

A solid gold phone, only $57,000 bucks doesn’t do email…Bah, I’ll wait for the smart phone version…..Hey Penzo, I’ll forward this link to the Honeybee, Merry Christmas!

 

Needy Family, yea right…

The next time you want to give to a needy family with a heart-string pulling story, maybe you need to read this one, bout gambling Momma losing her son’s  cancer treatment donations….Well maybe not, we’re probably all cynical enough….Hopefully the reason it’s such a big story is it doesn’t happen very often.

 

Used Cooking oil, yum…

Used cooking oil, found in gutters/sewers was resold in China, no wonder the Chinese are kicking our asses.

 

Sex Toys have a whole new meaning!

Call girls, money, and Toys R Us, sometimes truth is truly stranger than fiction….

 

Have the feds given Native American enough grief through the years?

The Cherokee Indian tribe is under pressure from the feds to not remove almost 3,000 African Americans from their tribal roles.  I’m sure oil drilling rights, and casino gambling money are part of this story….

 

Green is green, except when its wearing black and white  jail stripes…

Another green company with criminal investigations-this one resulting in a conviction. Green companies-  green with envy- while coveting us taxpayers greenbacks.

 

Rogue Trader-understatement of the year.

UBS, the Zurich based bank, announced a rogue trader had lost 2 billion bucks this week,  How is that “UBS…., you and us”, thing going???

 

Windows, the new Mac?

Windows 8-sounds like Microsoft finally has it’s act together.  As a PC guy, who has a Mac envy, it would be nice for Windows to make all my computer investments  not need to go in the toilet.  We’ll see….. (see cynicism noted above….)

 

Personal Finance Reads:

Buck Inspire has a great post about leaders and Captain Kirk….go read it, it makes a lot of sense-I promise!

My friend Sam, at Financial Samurai gives some unusual mortgage advice.  “Grain of salt” included, at no charge…..Sam is always thinking, but conventional thoughts don’t come easy to him….

Fairy Tales are the interesting topic at SoOverDebt-creative stuff Andrea.

For you bloggers wanting an extra income stream from your blog, (and who doesn’t) this site-mapping article at The Extra Money Blog may be helpful.

Jason, at Live Real Now, tells you three bad things about living within your means….As I tell my patients, I’m in love with “boring!”

For the grand finale:

And if you haven’t visited the Yakezie site lately, check out Khaleef’s back-story on his blog, Fat Guy, Skinny Wallet-Great name!

Have a great weekend!   Looking forward to attending the first gathering of personal finance bloggers- see you in 2 weeks at Fincon-Chicago style.

{Photo Credit: cdrummbks c.c.}

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