One of the ways that you can save money for your kids’ college education is by opening a 529 plan. And right now, you can get a free $50 for doing so when you open a plan with CollegeAdvantage, Ohio’s 529 plan. I learned about this great deal over at Lazy Man and Money, and I am excited — and likely to open one for my son. Especially since I will get $50 for free. Here is what Lazy Man says about the offer, which provides you an initial $25 and then adds another $25 when you fulfill certain requirements:
If …read more

Consumer confidence and other positive economic data are not enough to send the stock market higher.

The recession might have hit bottom.

I had some amusing economics professors in school, but their humor usually wasn’t intentional. This guy has to be the world’s first stand-up economist. If you don’t get his jokes, don’t worry. It just means you’re not an econ nerd. Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
This video was filmed at the first ever humor session of the meeting of the American Economics Association earlier this year.
 
 
Video and Image Credit: yorambauman, YouTube

How does your net worth measure up?

I was listening to a really interesting story about variable pricing in the music industry on NPR’s Morning Edition this week. The price discrepancies on Depeche Mode’s new album perfectly illustrated the concept of price discovery.  
The new album by Depeche Mode, “Sounds of the Universe” is priced at a low $3.99 on Amazon, and $9.99 on iTunes. Because of iTunes recent switch to a Digital Rights Management-free delivery model (enabling downloaded songs to be played on any type of play, not just the Apple  iPod), this is the same product.
So what’s it really worth?
That’s what Price Discovery aims to determine. Technically, the …read more

Apocolypse and conspiracy theories aside, the biggest fear associated with a pandemic swine flu outbreak right now is probably economic. What would really happen in a worldwide flu scenario? Top economists weigh in.
The World Bank on Bird Flu
In a 2005 report for the World Bank, Milan Brahmbhatt looked at the socio-economic impacts of avian flu. Bird, swine, it’s all the same. While Brahmbhatt’s report addresses a lot of issues specific to avian flu, he also includes plenty the non-poultry industry analysis of a worldwide flu pandemic.
Included are two types of economic costs arising from a pandemic flu outbreak:

The cost of increased …read more

In Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation, Daniel Gross paints a cynical picture of of the companies in dispair, the laid off workers, disappearing 401(k)s, and big government bailouts. Gross asserts that we got to the point of financial disaster by running the economy like a huge, pyramid scheme. Gross takes complicated issues and presents them in a way that the rest of us can understand.
Dumb Money picks apart the current crisis and ponders on what the future may hold by a journalist and author who specialized in business history and economics for a popular audience. Gross …read more

The Pareto Priniciple (also called the 80% – 20% Rule) has been applied in a variety of fields & disciplines; e.g., business management, time management, management of sales people, project management, development economics, etc. Basically, the Pareto Principle states: in any endeavor, a 20% segment can explain the status of almost anything and can influence what can or will happen to the undertaking. The Pareto Principle has also been called the Rule of the Vital Few and the Trivial Many.
For small businesses, it is best if you consider the 20% as critical and the 80% as …read more

The Pareto Priniciple (also called the 80% – 20% Rule) has been applied in a variety of fields & disciplines; e.g., business management, time management, management of sales people, project management, development economics, etc. Basically, the Pareto Principle states: in any endeavor, a 20% segment can explain the status of almost anything and can influence what can or will happen to the undertaking. The Pareto Principle has also been called the Rule of the Vital Few and the Trivial Many.
For small businesses, it is best if you consider the 20% as critical and the 80% as …read more