For those of you who haven't lived in New England for 30 years, let me give you a brief update. Baseball isn't a way to pass the time, but a way of life... and the Red Sox rule the 6 state region (except for the evil half on Connecticut that is in under the delusion that they are in New York).

For generations, the Red Sox didn't win a championship. They got as close as you can get many times, but it all fell apart in the end. The rival New York Yankees racked up a couple of dozen. In 2004, the Yankees were on their way to thwarting the Red Sox in the most embarrassing way, a four game sweep, when any religious fan will tell, God intervened. Balls started bouncing the Red Sox way in the late innings of the 4th game that would end the series. Not just a few fortunate bounces, but every... single... one.

The Red Sox managed to pull out game 4 and 5 with late heroics, giving Curt Schilling, one of their best pitchers a chance. However, Schilling had an ankle injury, an injury that caused to pitch terribly in game 1 of the series. The doctors thought they found a way to MacGyver it with super glue, some duct tape, and a little chewing gum (or maybe they used real medical techniques). Schilling went out an pitched a tremendous game with his ankle bleeding creating a true Red Sock. He won the game and the Red Sox pulled off a comeback to win the series that was unparalleled in baseball history. They then went on to win the World Series to get that championship that had the team for 86 years. He was a hero in New England.

Schilling, who was getting past his prime as a baseball player, retired and moved on to business. He created a company called 38 Studios with the intention of creating a variety of digital media such as video games and films. When Rhode Island promised $75 million dollars in loan guarantees he moved the company there.

Things were going well until 38 Studios ran out of money recently. The company missed a loan repayment to Rhode Island, which got the state active. It turned political. Schilling claims that Rhode Island politicians weren't keeping some of the promises they made and the governor of Rhode Island released a company secret about them still being a year away from releasing their biggest game. This caused the company hardship as they lost much of the negotiating power they would have had in selling off the company assets. With no money, the company had to lay off all the employees. With an estimated 400 jobs lost, Schilling has come under fire.

I understand the state's point that it has to be honest with the tax payers about the loan that looks like it is going to default. On the other hand, such honesty has a way of being a self-fulfilling prophesy. Just as an unemployed person would have difficulty in getting a loan, a company with financial problems isn't likely to fair much better. No investor wants to throw good money after bad.

Schilling had a quote of:

"I have done whatever I can do to create jobs and create a successful business, with my own income. Fifty million dollars, everything I've ever saved, has been put back into the economy. The $49 million from Rhode Island has been put back in the economy. I've never taken a penny and I've done nothing but create jobs and create economy. And so how does that translate into welfare baby? I've tried to do right by people."

My friend made the point that even people on welfare put money back in the economy. While I agreed that this was true, he did have his own "skin in the game", much like putting down 20% for a mortgage. He also directly created jobs in the local economy and didn't do something like go buy a bunch of Ferraris or Rolexes that helps the economies of companies outside of Rhode Island. It's not like people on welfare are buying Ferraris or products from other economies, but the point was that he was creating something. With more money or better spending, perhaps he could have created the next Electronic Arts, which would bring a lot of jobs and earn the state a lot of tax dollars.

As a home owner in Rhode Island, I'm on the fence on this one. This is why I wasn't sure whether I should write about it. For the most part, I side with Schilling's good intentions. He created jobs with his money (and Rhode Islands') that wouldn't have been in Rhode Island in the first place. If the company can't be salvaged and it is a total business failure, it won't be the first time that it has happened. We can blame Schilling for poorly managing a business, but that's hardly anything new either. I think Rhode Island should have kept its criticism under wraps for at least a couple months while working with 38 Studios on an exit strategy.

• Looking into Green Cars - My car is currently 11 years old. I'm going with the Tom Brady school of optimism that it has just as many years left. Since that may not match reality, I'm preparing myself by looking into what my next car would be. This time, I'd like to buy something that is lightly used depreciated rather than new. I really like the idea of the new plug in hybrids often abbreviated (PHEVs). The Chevy Volt is one example that is aleady on the market. The Ford C-Max Energi is coming out later this year and that has caught my eye as a good mix of energy efficient savings with a family size car. I hope to expand on this with a more complete article in the coming weeks.
• Ultrabooks in Focus - When I'm not thinking about those green cars, I'm looking into Ultrabooks. Those are the thin and light laptops that Intel is pushing. Asus has a Zenbook Prime coming in a month or so that looks to be leap-frog anything else out there by a significant margin. I got a chance to look at a earlier version at the Microsoft Store in Palo Alto yesterday and it was impressive. The Microsoft Store itself was impressive. At twice the size of the Apple Store next door, it was packed.
• The Mess that is Hewlett-Packard - This article on how crazy HP's management is simply amazing to me. It's amazing that a company with dozens of billions in revenue would have employees bringing home their trash because they cut back on the pick-up. No wonder webOS couldn't advance smartphones and tablets - it didn't get a shot.

And now for the Personal Finance Links:

• Digerati Life discusses 7 ways to deal with spousal debt.
• My Dollar Plan goes over 5 ways to save money when your spouse is a spender.
• Million Dollar Journey says cut the cable: watch TV for less.
• Free From Broke talks about how to get your spouse more involved in the family finances.
• Five Cent Nickel asks is it time to switch to LED lightbulbs?
• Len Penzo dot Com wonders when is not stopping payment on a lost check worth the risk?
• Dough Roller gives 3 reasons to cheer a market drop.
• Money Crush on financial leverage.
• Bargaineering teaches with how “not to be a jerk” haggling guide.
• Made a tax mistake? Make amends! says Don't Mess With Taxes.

The plan was a series of five posts covering various aspects of our retirement plan. I encourage you to read them starting with the link above as there is a lot of background that I'm not going to repeat here. To give a complete picture, I'll squeeze them and the updates into one post. As you read this, please note that I'm going to liberal with the vague estimates:

Where We Are Now (Original article)

At the time I put my wife and my net worth at around $400K combined. We keep most of our finances separate and I haven't checked in with recently, so I'll have to take a stab at our assets being between $500K-$600K. The lower end would be due to the decline in real estate prices. Our real estate assets will be covered a bit later.

The next thing to look at is income. Combined my wife and I make in between $150K and $175K a year - pre-tax. After adjusting for taxes that's probably between $110K and $130K. We spend roughly around $60K and $70K a year. That gives us around $50-60K to save. These are estimates and that finally number does sound a little on the high to me. In any case, that's what we'll go with.

My Personal Income (Original article)\

As I wrote above, our finances are kept mostly separate. I run some websites include this one which make me some money. I hope to continue to run businesses into my retirement, but betting on blogs to exist 30 years from now seems a bit naïve. I still think that I'll be able to provide value to people and find a way to turn that value into income for myself.

I also have a Roth IRA and a SEP-IRA with around $160,000 in them. It's dangerous to try to compound that money and project it to 30 years from now, but I'm in a risky mood. With no more contributions and presuming a 4% growth after inflation that could be worth $520K. Since I accounted for inflation (or hoped to) in the growth rate, we can think of that as accounting for at least 10 years of retirement if use $50K a year for living expenses. It is actually quite a bit more than 10 years since it will continue to earn interest during those 10 years while I'm withdrawing funds to live on. Bonus points to a commenter who can connect me to a good financial calculator for this. (Note: Bonus points can't be used for goods or services.)

I also have a rental property. It has 21 years of mortgage on it. After I do some necessary updates, it should throw off money each month. Or, in a worst case scenario, it would be a place big enough for my wife and I to live in, eliminating our cost of housing (except those pesky property taxes). Lesson: Never underestimate the value of the forced savings of a real estate purchase.

The hope is that between my business, my retirement nest egg, and my rental properties, I've got enough diverse assets to cover my needs.

My Wife's Plan (Original article)

As I mentioned on the article earlier this week, my wife gets a military pension after 20 years of service. I supposed this pension wouldn't qualify as retiring, but she'll be 44 at the time, which qualifies for early. I went into great detail a variety of options, but it looks like her pension is worth anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000 depending on how long she works, a potential promotion, etc. That's adjusted for inflation, which is very important. If she only had this, and I continue to pull weight with my plan above, we should have an income nearing 6 figures, or possibly over. (Side note: The original article included analysis from Plugged in Finance, who I haven't heard from in quite a long time, but they are still blogging, even writing an article earlier this year of what is my military pension worth?)

My wife doesn't expect to retire after she leaves the military, so we'll be able to "double-dip" in the income bucket for a few years. Of course what we expect and what happens might be different things. She's also been contributing to her TSP (military's version of the 401k) and Roth IRAs which will add a traditional retirement portfolio to our cash flow. She has a rental property as well and it will be paid in full in 18 years. Like my rental property, with some much need updates at that time, it will start to pay us a monthly income.

Obstacles, Expenses, and Conclusion (original article)

When I wrote the series almost 4 years ago I didn't have clarity on a number of things. The biggest factor is that we didn't know if we'd have children. With a baby boy on the way earlier this year, that question is at least partially answered. Using the calculator at Baby Center, it looks like it might cost $400K. The site budgets $8300+ a year for housing as the biggest expense. Since we plan to stuff junior in a closet, we can save some money there (just checking to make sure you are following along).

Update: One huge factor that I had forgotten about in writing this article originally is that the Post 9/11 GI Bill. It allows my wife to transfer the her education benefit from the military to our upcoming child. I wasn’t sure that we qualified, but over the last couple of days, it appears that we do. The benefit is significant… free 4-year tuition at a state school (or $17,500 inflation-adjusted at a private school), plus a living stipend of around $15,000-25,000 a year (it's adjusted for cost of living in the zipcode of the college/university), and $1000/yr for book and supplies. I conservatively estimate the value at $150,000, but it could be much more.

Health care was another great concern I highlighted in the previous article. From my 16 hours in military retirement boot camp, it seems that health care won't be that expensive... about $500 a year for what we have now. This is a heavy burden lifted.

The previous article also mentioned that living in Boston or San Francisco would have expensive housing. We bought another home in Rhode Island last year with a 15-year mortgage. The rent almost covers the expenses, which means that we will be close to having the place paid for by the time we retire. This home is big enough for the three of us (plus our dog). If we choose to make this our residence, it will free our other two properties to produce income.

One thought that I should have mentioned earlier is that I feel that the very definition of retirement is extremely vague. For some it means just traveling and having no responsibilities. I think for me, it will mean still working, but doing something I very much enjoy that happens to make money.

Nearly four years later, I'm not sure we have any concrete answers about retirement. However, one thing I do feel pretty confident about is that we are heading in the right direction. I'm seeing positive progress from a number of sources. In fact there are enough sources that I didn't have to mention Social Security up until now. It will be around in some form when my wife and I reach age 70 (I'm presuming that will be the age it kicks in). That will be an extra lifeline.

What are your thoughts on early retirement? Are you going with the traditional method of investing in the equity markets and having some 2 million to withdraw on? Let me know in the comments.

For most people in the military, safety is one the key concerns. We have a bit of a different situation as my wife enjoys a typical office job with a lot of traveling. As a pharmacist she's not going to be on the front lines in any foreign wars. She's not even going to be administering health care in any unless things get so bad that America itself is a battle zone.

Being in the military has some amazing perks. We get to shop at commissaries, which are essentially non-profit grocery stores. However, the biggest and best perk is the military pension. After 20 years of service, a service member is eligible to retire with 50% of his/her base pay. If they choose to stay on that percentage goes up 2.5% to reach 75% at 30 years of service. That's when they start to kick you out.

This brings a natural question, how long should you stay in the military? Obviously the longer you stay in the more your pension is, but the whole point of having a pension is to use it and enjoy it, right? There's no right or wrong answer for everyone here, but when I looked at the pay charts there were answers that seemed a lot more "right" than others. I'll illustrate with an example of our own case. Well be using these military pay charts. It may be handy to open that in a new tab or window (clicking it should do that).

My wife is an O-5 with over 12 years of service. As we can see that gives her a pay scale of $6999 a month (awfully exact people these military folk). If you scroll down to Over 20 years of service, you'll see that she maintains the same rank (which is typical), she'll make $8199 a month in base pay. Retire with 20 years of service and her pension will be $4100 (I'm going to round up the 50 cents) a month or $49,000 a year. That's a pretty solid pension when you factor in our other retirement saving and the fact that we may continue to work. If she advances a rank, which is likely in the next 8 years she'll be at the $9371 level good for a pension of $56,226.

Important note about inflation: Military pensions are adjusted for inflation as are these pay charts each year. Thus for the most part we can ignore inflation factors.

Now, let's look at what happens if she stays in and goes longer than 20 years. If she doesn't advance in rank her pension goes to $8446 a month after 22 years and stops growing. However, since 2 more years of experience gives her another 5% of pension (2.5% growth each year) she would make $55,743.60. After that she is "only" working for the very nice salary and the increased pension size (I had to double check my typing there - yikes). I put only in quotes, because that's still a lot, but there's no growth in salary.

However, if she's able to advance a rank to O-6, the growth curve continues until 26 years of service before it levels off. Where retirement for an O-6 would give $56,226 at 20 years, at 26 years, an O-6 would get 65% (the 6 years more years of service gets closer to the 30) of the $10,350 salary or $80,730 a year! Of course during this time the O-6 also gets the nice paying salary.

When pensions, life expectancy also comes to mind. If you were to work 40 years, getting 100% of your base pay as a pension is great, but if you get at age 70 and die at age 75, you didn't really maximize that pension money too much. My wife will be 43 or 44 when she has 20 years of years of experience (I can't remember which). If we were to assume a life expectancy of 75 years (I'll be conservative), that's 31 years of pension at $56,226. Going with the hope that she's an O-6 at the time that would be $1,743,006 in pension pay over that time (and again, this is adjusted for inflation). However, if she goes with the 26 years she'll retire at age 50, giving her 25 years of pension at $80,730. That's $2,018,250 in pension. Those 6 years add another $275,244. If she were to live to 80 it becomes a $397,764 difference and at 85 it becomes a $520,284 difference.

I'll let you do the math for the total value of that pension (hint: it is close to $3 million). It should come as no surprise that the military is seriously looking to reduce the pension benefit as a way of balancing the budget.

One thing I should have noted previously is that there are a few retirement systems in the military. This uses the Final Pay system, which my wife wouldn't qualify for. Since it applies to people in the military before 1980, very few people people will be in the system. There's another system called the high-3, which averages the high 3 years of pay to determine the benefit. This is more accurate, but it makes for a much more complicated analysis. The principles still remain the same, but the numbers and years change slightly.

The lesson here is to look at the military pay charts and plot out a career path in advance. It is easy to say, I've had enough of the military and its time to get out. However, it is worth stopping and doing some math and seeing if getting that next rank advancement is worth it. The difference could be as much as a half million dollars.

Sometimes I look back and wonder what might have been if I had answered some interview questions differently. At the same time, some of the engineers I talked to had said that they put in 12-13 hours of work a day. This is one of the reasons that I never dwell on Facebook. It wasn't a place that I was going to be successful at. I put in those hours at start-ups before, but I had reached a point where I needed to focus on balancing time with friends and family.

So the big news is that tomorrow Facebook is going to go public. What this means is that those employees will be able to start exercising their stock options and getting real cash to spend. It seems like that is grabbing some nationwide headlines. However, it's magnified a thousand times in the local media.

It's got me thinking, "With all the Facebook money in the local area, how can I capitalize on it?" I know a local real estate agent who is expecting a bit of a windfall as a flood of new millionaires look for housing. Try as I might, I haven't been able to come up with a way to get my hands on any of that money. (If you have any tips, leave a comment.)

The question that everyone seems to be asking is whether they should buy into the Facebook IPO. It is looking to be priced at around $38 and I expect that it might close tomorrow somewhere in the $42-46 range based on the excitement. That would make Facebook worth around $120 billion dollars. That's certainly a lot of money, but it is not an unreasonable valuation of Facebook in my opinion. I think once the excitement dies down it could fall back to close to $30 a share. At that point, I would probably consider grabbing some. I'm a strong believer that attention is one of the most valuable commodities in today's world, and Facebook seems to be the leader with many people spending hours of their time there.

That's how I intend to play the Facebook IPO. What about you?

Well, we know that Facebook isn't going to be worth 36 trillion dollars?

Having been born in 1976, The Monkees had stop recording years before. However, that didn't stop the television show from making an immediate impact on me in the early 80's (other shows in that category include The Banana Splits and The Baseball Bunch). Having little money buy the music, I would tape the songs off the television on a small recorder I had (take that you mp3 swapping fools!). I think Pleasant Valley Sunday was my favorite song for a long time, though A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You and Randy Scouse Git favorites too.

Feeling a little nostalgic, I opened up the The Monkees Wikipedia page. When you are 5 or 6 years old watching a television show, it was the epitome of good-nature fun - just a bunch of wacky people getting into wacky adventures with catchy songs. However, 30 years later, I can appreciate what they accomplished in a different way.

Many people know that The Monkees were 4 comedic actors cast to capitalize on The Beatles craze in the mid to late sixties. Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were the big musicians, but they weren't making much. Davy Jones was a rising actor after a brief Broadway stint, and Mickey Dolenz was an actor who played a little guitar and did a little singing. That's fine, because the plan was to dub them over music from another band.

Flash forward to today and the random cast people with the bare minimum of music experience became one of the best selling music groups of all time. This I find amazing. How did they do it?

On some level, there's an appeal to a certain demographic. We saw at the time with Elvis and Beatles and it has progressed to New Kids on the Block, 'N Sync, and Justin Beiber. A lesson here is never bet against the buying power of teenage girls when it comes to music.

However, I liked The Monkees... and I wasn't in that demographic (there's a comment section below for wise crack responses). There must have been something more appealing. It couldn't have been music talent, because we know they didn't have much of that. When the show started, they had no drummer. Davy Jones tested the best, but he couldn't be seen over the drum set (and getting him seen was a priority for that Beiber demographic). Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith refused, leaving Mickey Dolenz with no drumming experience to be the drummer.

One thing that we learned from Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, is that the 10,000 hours of practice goes a long way. He cited that the Beatles playing many long days in Hamburg. However, perhaps a better example of the 10,000 hour phenomenon was The Monkees. The Wikipedia article references this:

"The four actors would spend 12-hour days on the set, many of them waiting for the production crew to do their jobs. Noticing that their instruments were left on the set unplugged, the four decided to turn them on and start playing."

It may sound very un-Lazy of me to say, but give credit to them. They put in the work, learned the skills and prospered. In addition to the musical talent, they had a knack for spotting catchy music. A few of their most popular songs were written by Neil Diamond. I was close to saying that The Monkees got lucky that they had such a talented musician writing for them, but according to a well-cited Wikipedia article, "There is a popular misconception that Diamond wrote and composed these songs specifically for the made-for-TV quartet. In reality, Diamond had written and recorded these songs for himself, but the cover versions were released before his own." How The Monkees were able to pull this off is something that I'd be very interested to know.

Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers pointed out one additional thing that works with the 10,000 hours of preparation. It's good old opportunity. In Outliers, it was Bill Gates and Bill Joy who had extensive access to computers when they weren't readily available to the general public. The Monkees had their share in that getting cast for the television show in the first place.

As the Profiles of Success expands, I think we'll find this is a recurring theme. If you have an idea for future segment in the series, leave a comment, or send me an email.

Lately I've been consumed by HerbaLife, and the pyramid scheme questions around it. It looks like a lot of people are finally starting to learn about MLMs. There are three great articles that I really think are must-reads: Barron's (part of it may require subscription, sometimes it worked for me and other times it didn't), CNBC, and Fraud Files. The last one is from an MLM expert, so it is quite in-depth and informed. The Barron's one is a popular business journal. It is rare to see mainstream media write about MLMs being pyramid schemes nowadays - the threat of lawyers usually make the article not worth it.

Finally, here are the personal finance links (some of which may be old as I've fell behind in publishing these):

• Digerati Life offers some tips on using a headhunter or job recruiter.
• My Dollar Plan explains how to host out-of-town guests without breaking the bank.
• Money Smart Life
• Generation X Finance on Social Security – what you need to know about benefits, coverage, and eligibility.
• My Journey to Millions shares how to do Las Vegas on a payment plan.
• Studenomics asks how do people afford graduate school?
• Get Rich Slowly discusses why you’ll likely need less in retirement.
• Canadian Finance Blog wonders will being generous help your finances?
• Saving Advice presents inexpensive ways to monitor your health at home.
• Len Penzo dot Com says use a ledger to teach kids money management skills.

Here's how it works. You buy a SiliconDust HD HomeRun Prime and hook it up to a computer running Windows 7, and ask your cable company for a CabeleCard. Put the CableCard in the Prime, configure some software in Windows Media Center and connect the HDMI out from the computer to your television and enjoy a DVR with the ability to record three shows for nothing. That's nothing if your cable company gives you a CableCard for free as Comcast does for me. Other companies charge a small fee, but it's much less than renting the full HD cable box. To make it all look nice, I suggest you find a Dell ZinoHD on Ebay or Craigslist. Dell discontinued it, so it may be tough to find. If you have difficulties, you can find alternatives searching for Home theater PC a HTPC.

You might want to add a remote like the one I have - it is great except for the glaring lack of a previous channel button for flipping between two sporting events. (You can't see me, but I'm shaking my fist in mock rage - except it's not entirely mock.)

Having used this set-up for 6 months, I feel it is time to review it from a practical perspective rather than a theoretical one. It's great if it saves money, but if it's a hassle is really worth it? Let's start with the bad news first:

Unless you have someone in your family who is fairly good technology, it's not the best idea for a primary television. At the core of the system is a Windows computer. Even though they are more reliable nowadays, it is a complex system and complex systems lose reliability. About once a week, I wake up to a television with no sound. This is easily fixed by killing the Windows Media Center process and restarting it, something that takes about a 30 seconds. However, with a cable box you don't have this issue. About a half dozen times I've got stuck with a black screen. The only way out of it was to ctrl+alt+del, open up the Task Manager and kill the process. It's easy when you know what to expect of it. These minor technical issues and the fact that if your computer crashes you lose your TV (though we have a couple of Windows 7 laptops that could get us up and watching in a couple of minutes in a catastrophe), are key reasons why it isn't for everyone yet.

With the bad out of the way, let's get to the good. With three tuners we can record three shows at a time or watch one live while recording two more. My wife likes her talent/reality shows and I like sitcoms, so we often have a need to record a few shows in a competitive time slot. Comcast's box was limited to recoding two at a time or watching one and taping one. Comcast's box was limited to a 500GB hard drive that filled up very quickly with a dozen HDTV shows. I have a 1TB hard drive with Windows Media Center and it seems to be much better at compressing them as I have a dozens of HDTV shows and movies. I have the whole season of American Idol and those are 2 hours each. With Comcast, I had to DVR everything in standard definition, but with Windows Media Center, everything is HD. I haven't watched standard definition in months.

Besides the hardware advantages of having a full computer power my television, there are software advantages as well. The Windows Media Center guide is extremely fast in scrolling through program. Having a full computer gives me quick access to Netflix, HBOGo, MLB.TV, and Amazon Instant play. The MLB.TV subscription is $60 cheaper than the one through the cable company and I can watch it on a smartphone or while traveling.

Finally, I can use the "record to DVD button" and archive anything that I want for the future. (Note: this may be restricted for some shows and channels, HBO ones come to mind.) In theory, I should be able to access my shows on the road like Slingbox allows, through a free program called Remote Potato. While it works for most people, I seem to be in the minority where the program crashes. It's disappointing, but for extra functionality it isn't bad.

In the end, I think the minor technical glitches are well worth the upgrade in functionality. The price savings help, but it will be a few years before the whole set-up is paid for (I went with a more expensive $500+ computer in addition to the Silicon HD hardware). From a pure pricing perspective, this solution isn't a quick win for your wallet.

My expectation is that over time a company will realize the opportunity here and offer a pitch to consumers to offer them this increased functionality without the glitches at a price that will save them money over the long-haul. Such a company will be able to worm its way to millions of consumers' living rooms effectively creating a platform similar to how the iPod revolutionized Apple. The device's ubiquity could allow it to make direct deals with content providers effectively cutting out the cable companies...

... but that's a whole different article for another day.

Last year around half of the companies at Finovate were marketing their products to financial institutions. Their pitch was, "That's our demo. If you represent a bank, please come to our booth and invest and/or partner with us." It's disheartening to see something interesting only to find that I can't write about it because people can't use it.

Yesterday I went to the show with SVB from The Digerati Life and watched 32 companies present demos of their products. Only five struck me as being of possible interest to people who aren't bankers looking to invest in other companies. I never would have imagined I'd long for the days of writing "another Mint" in my notes.

Here's a countdown of those top 5:

5. Expense and Itinerary Tracking - There were two companies that seemed to do the exact same thing: Concur and Expensify. They take the paper receipts and turn them into digital ones, making the reporting much easier. This year each company added itinerary tracking to their platforms. Concur bought TripIt, a company I had heard of before and Expensify developed their own solution in house.

4. iQuantifi - This company is has four employees and it is just getting started. They are another personal finance management software company (like Mint). What caught my attention is their goal engine. The user creates goals such as buy a new car or buy a new house and the software creates a saving plan for you. You can drag the new car up, but you'll need to save more and/or push the new house back. It looked like a great visualization and budgeting tool. While the company is in its very earliest stages, it has promise.

3. Personal Capital - They were launching an iPhone application that seems to do everything you'd ever want in a personal finance application. They showed off integration of many bank and investing accounts and the ability to move money between them easily. I would have ranked it higher, but an HTML5 mobile website would have been preferred so that everyone with a smartphone can use the product.

2. WattzOn - Their software analyzes your energy use and gives you tips on saving money. I wrote about this on Monday and one commenter made the point that their software wasn't very helpful for them. I'm still giving them second place, because the concept is good. Their management is smart, and if their software doesn't work for everyone now, it should evolve and be a good resource for consumers for years.

1. BillGuard - This company allows people to flag questionable charges in their bills. BillGuard uses this input from many people (crowdsourcing at its finest), and lets you know if you have questionable charges on your bill. They were at the show to announce something even more helpful: a transaction resolution center. They'll dispute the charges for you. Lazy-approved!

Day 2 of Finovate is going on as I post this. However, SVB and I decided not to go today. It simply didn't make much sense when a vast majority of the companies don't apply to your audience. After yesterday, I gett the feeling that we're just missing 15 more companies who help people send money from one person to another via a mobile app.

For the first time in 5 years, I decided to be un-Lazy with Finovate and look at the companies presenting in advance. I couldn't be more disappointed. I went through 48 of the 64 companies presenting last night and did not see much for consumers to get excited about. One of the few exceptions was WattzOn a company that helps you save money on electric bill by analyzing how much you are spending and where you can spend less. (I apparently would be well served asking my landlord for a new fridge, because the current one isn't very energy efficient.) Other than that, the vast majority of companies seem to be those that are providing services to other financial institutions or small businesses. I'm all for mom and pop shops getting access to technology to help them take payments anywhere, but it isn't that noteworthy and solutions are already in place.

I hope that by setting my expectations low, there will be some pleasant surprises.

Here are a couple of quick hits before some personal finance links of the last week.

• SoapBoxers has a fiction writing contest and you can win money by voting - I'm probably not going to write for the Soap Boxer's Fiction Writing contest, but I may vote for a chance to win $5 - that's the right amount of effort for me. However, I could surprise some by writing about how Justice Jake thwarted the Evil SpiderBird. It was a dream from a couple of years ago, but my dog was pretty cool... and you never want to run into SpiderBird.
• I was a little disappointed by the lack of comments on my late Friday post: Pyramid Scheme Questions Cause Herbalife to Lose 3 Billion Dollars, but I got an email from an expert on Pyramid Schemes that more than made up for it. It seemed like a very productive discussion.

And now for the links:

• Digerati Life posts about the fanciest and most valuable Easter eggs in the world.
• My Dollar Plan shares how to request copies or transcripts of past tax returns.
• Free Money Finance goes over how to 80-20 your career.
• Million Dollar Journey presents 3 keys to building wealth video.
• My Journey to Millions discusses factors in considering where to live and work.
• Studenomics tells how buying a home can go wrong in your 20s.
• Start Talking Cents offers up 8 ways to save money on groceries without coupons.
• Debt Sucks explains how even a small debt can screw you years later.
• Bill Eater shares why debt doesn't always mean you need life insurance.
• Saving Advice posts things most people regret buying.
• One Frugal Girl blogs about spousal conflict: paying full price for things one frugal girl.
• DINKS Finance asks what is the difference between blue collar and white collar workers?

Let me start off by saying that I'm not very familiar with HerbaLife. They've been mentioned in connection with my MonaVie and LifeVantage articles, but I haven't researched them like those other companies. With that understanding in place let's get to the news.

Earlier this week HerbaLife (ticker:HLF) announced their earnings and had a conference call. The earnings for the quarter were down a little, but the outlook for the future was raised. The consensus was that it was more or less business as usual at HerbaLife. However, during the call Greenlight Capital president David Einhorn asked a few pointed questions:

"First is, how much of the sales that you'd make in terms of final sales are sold outside the network and how much are consumed within the distributor base?"

"What is the incentive for supervisor to sign somebody up to become a distributor as opposed to - if they're just going to consume for themselves as opposed to just selling them the product for the markup. How does the distributor - how does the supervisor come out better?"

"When you had your previous 10-K, you disclosed three groups of distributors at the low-end. You called 29% self consumers, 57% small retailers, and 14% potential sales leaders and then that disclosure did not repeat in the subsequent 10-K. So, I got two questions, first of all how do you track that and how do you characterize and know which ones are which? And second, why did you stop disclosing that in the last 10-K? Is that something that you stopped tracking or just stopped disclosing?"

These questions put the stock in a free-fall. Over the last 5 days it lost 35% of its value dropping from $70 a share to 46. I read some of the business blogs and they didn't seem to know what make of these questions. For example, MarketWatch just blamed it on the fact that Einhorn was asking them. HerbaLife responded by saying:

"The fact that recognized short seller David Einhorn asked questions on the call put pressure on Herbalife’s stock price. Mr. Einhorn’s questions raised no new subjects or concerns. Our business fundamentals are very strong and we are confident in our financials, our disclosures and our network marketing business method."

So we are to ignore the questions themselves and just chalk it up to who is asking what their motives are? "I don't think so... Homey don't play dat!"

There are two fishy things going on here.

First, within hours of the call, the Law Offices of Howard G. Smith announced and investigation on behalf of shareholders of Herbalife. That was pretty quick. I think Einhorn already knew that it was in the works and this was the reason for his questions. This would mean that Einhorn isn't the cause, but in fact just a messenger. Very few news outlets reported on this investigation. (The other side is this is that maybe the Law Offices of Howard G. Smith just jumped on the hot button issue very quickly to get some business. I think the former is more likely.)

Second, the point of the questions, even though it isn't explicitly expressed is determine if HerbaLife is a pyramid scheme. You can look at the questions and there's nothing in there that says "pyramid scheme." It's not a surprise why much of Wall Street missed it and didn't make the connection. CNBC did a segment with analyst Tim Ramey at D.A. Davidson:

As you can see the interviewer (I forget his name) says the questions are about the margins of selling the product at retail or wholesale. Tim Ramey corrects him and says that it really isn't about margins at all. Tim Ramey upgrade the stock after the sell-off and suggested that people should buy it hand-over fist. Ramey brings up the issue of customers vs. distributors saying (paraphrased), "If you are customer, you aren't very smart, you should become a distributor to get that discount. The people who just want to buy the product become preferred customers at NuSkin/Usana or distributors at HerbaLife. There's nothing wrong with that by the way."

I beg to differ with Tim Ramey. There's nothing wrong with being a preferred customer, but if the MLM consists of all distributors and not preferred customers there's a lot wrong with that... at least according to the FTC:

"Not all multilevel marketing plans are legitimate. Some are pyramid schemes. It’s best not to get involved in plans where the money you make is based primarily on the number of distributors you recruit and your sales to them, rather than on your sales to people outside the plan who intend to use the products.

... Avoid any plan where the reward for recruiting new distributors is more than it is for selling products to the public. That’s a time tested tip-off to a pyramid scheme.

... Another sign of a pyramid scheme is if the money you make depends more on recruiting — getting new distributors to pay for the right to participate in the plan — than on sales to the public."

The FTC says a whole more in a bunch of other documents. I've summmarized a few of the key documents and they all say, "MLMs must focus on sales to outside participants."

Is HerbaLife a Pyramid Scheme?

With this piece of information, it is worth deeper at Einhorn's questions - but I'm most interested in the first one. You can listen to the audio of the call here (scroll down to the video box) or read a transcript of it here.

When looking at that first question it becomes clear that when Einhorn asked, "How much of the sales that you'd make in terms of final sales are sold outside the network and how much are consumed within the distributor base?" he was really asking, "Is HerbaLife a pyramid scheme?" It is a very fair question and one that the FTC says you should ask of any MLM to make sure it isn't a pyramid scheme.

HerbaLife's response was "So, David, we have a 70% custom rule which is basically says that 70% of all products sold to consumers or actually consume my distributors for their own personal use."

I've read HerbaLife's response a number of times and it's not helping me answer Einhorn's questions. As best I can tell 70% of the product is sold to a combination of consumers who may be distributors or the general public. Who knows what happens to the other 30%... I guess it's thrown in the trash? (For those who really know about MLMs, the 70% is not a random number that HerbaLife picked out of a hat, it is the percentage of retail customers a company should have as defined in a big FTC-Amway law case at the end the 70's.)

Tim Ramey in the CNBC video above makes a good point. HerbaLife doesn't really know where these sales are going. That's tough poop for HerbaLife. They were the ones that created the compensation system. They need to be able to ensure compliance or change the compensation plan. I offer some advice here: How an MLM Can Show It Isn’t an Illegal Pyramid Scheme. The idea is simple. Don't pay people for product sold to other distributors, but only those who are preferred customers not in HerbaLife. This ensures that outside sales are made and that it isn't an endless chain recruiting system, which is what the FTC is looking for.

A day later after having time to think about it, HerbaLife had a more specific answer for Einhorn's questions:

"The company said that at the low end of its distributors, 27 percent were people who bought products for their own use; 61 percent used the products personally and sold modest quantities to friends and family; and 12 percent signed up with the intention of seeking a promotion in the distributor hierarchy."

Notice how the response is qualified to address the low end of its distributors. What about the high end? Is their reward for the recruited distributors more than their sales to the public? In every MLM I have looked at it is. And that would be a "time tested tip-off to a pyramid scheme" from the FTC quotes above.

Continuing on with HerbaLife's response, they once again don't give a clear answer to where the product is being sold. In fact shouldn't the 27% "who bought product for own use" be included in the 61% "who used the products personally..."? This shouldn't be brain teaser. Some percentage of people buying the product are distributors and the rest are not.

I give analyst Gary Albanese at Auriga USA credit as he said Einhorn was asking how much product was being sold through to customers, and the company was giving an answer of how much was being consumed by distributors themselves.

My best analysis of this answer is that the 27%, the 61% and the 12% are all effectively sales to distributors within HerbaLife and not to end customers with the except of the "modest quantities sold to friends of family." That modest quantity does not fit with the FTC's repeated requirements of focusing a majority of sales to customers outside of the company. Therefore, the only conclusion I can draw is that HerbaLife is indeed a publicly traded pyramid scheme.

Finally, it is worth noting that late last year, a court in Belgium ruled that HerbaLife was indeed a pyramid scheme. Belgium's laws for pyramid schemes aren't too different than the United States.

Further Reading: If you are weird like me and find this kind of thing fascinating I suggest you should check out the full story on: MLMs Vs. Pyramid Schemes.

More Further Reading:

Days after I published this CNBC caught on to the what Einhorn was getting at published this article. It's a very good read.

Fraud Files covers this Herbalife issue in depth as well.

Finally a court in California said that HerbaLife might be and endless chain scheme (PDF):

Moreover, in the Court’s view, Herbalife’s entire business model appears to incentivize primarily the payment of compensation that is "facially unrelated to the sale of the product to ultimate users because it is paid based on the suggested retail price of the amount ordered from [Herbalife], rather than based on actual sales to consumers.'"

Today, I bring you another source of awesomeness... again one that is largely overlooked. It is Dave Pell's NextDraft email newsletter. Here's an explanation of NextDraft in his own words:

"Each morning I visit about fifty news sites and from that swirling nightmare of information quicksand, I pluck the top ten most fascinating items of the day, which I deliver with a fast, pithy wit that will make your inbox vibrate with delight."

I have tried dozens of email newsletters over the years and every one of them has been a disappointment - except for Dave Pell's. The pithy wit is nice, but it's not what I come for (sorry Dave). The meat of the product is the ten stories he chooses. Maybe it's because he's in Silicon Valley like I am, but I find that I click on over 70% of the stories he highlights. When I got to USA Today or CNN, it's surprising if I find 2 articles that I'm interested in.

Here's an example of a few of the items in Pell's Newsletter today:

"What do you think is the world's leading cause of death among people between the ages of 10 and 24? I bet you didn't answer: Road traffic."

"Don't Try to Be Great: Speaking of managing the transition from adolescence to adulthood, here are 10 things your commencement speaker won't tell you."

"President Obama has adopted 'Forward' as his 2012 campaign slogan. Choosing these slogans is part of a long and often weird presidential contest tradition. Here's a visual history of some of the more notable slogans, from Don't swap horses midstream, to the inspiring: Not just peanuts."

This may sound like a paid advertisement for Pell's Newsletter, but I haven't had any contact with him. Also, as he notes from time to time in the newsletter, it has no business plan. Since there's no monetization strategy - he wouldn't be able to pay me anyway. At some point, I would expect to see advertising in there, but today there is none. (Dave, if you are reading this perhaps we can get you introduced to Amanda Steinberg of Daily Worth.)

In the meantime, I highly encourage you to head on over to NextDraft and signup today.

When I did my last Lending Club update in September of last year, I was making 7.13% return (according to Lending Club, but there is disagreement on how to an accurate number with regard to P2P.) So with the advantage of more time and a bigger sample size of loans, what do we have today? It looks like this:

Lending Club Results - May 2012

I did make one change in this view over the previous months. Rather than show the number of loans in the lower right, I chose to show the amount. My thinking is that this gives you a clear idea of where I am with regard to failed loans. That's what most people fear when it comes to P2P, "Am I gonna get paid?!?!"

So you can see that I have had $338 worth of deadbeats and I have another $72 heading into that range. That's a loss of $410. However, that is counterbalanced by the $960.28 that I've received in interest, leading to a gain of $550. You'd think that may make it easy to calculate returns, but I had put money in irregularly over the years. That makes the math a little difficult, so I'm going to lean back on Lending Club's number of 6.71% annual return.

While that 6.71% is down from the 7.13% from last May, it isn't drastically down that's a cause for concern. One thing that I like about Lending Club it pays much better than any savings account around today. Of course, a savings account has guaranteed interest rate and gives you access to your money right away if you need it. With a diverse set of loans, Lending Club offers a return I can count on - it isn't like they everyone is going to suddenly turn into deadbeats. While I can't get at my money as easily as a savings account, I can sell my loan if I choose, which, if successful, would get me money back without waiting. Additionally, with the loans staggered and micro-payments coming in each month, I get a couple hundred dollars in payments and expiring loans. Some of this I have to reinvest to keep it going, but if things are a little tight one month, I could sneak some cash out. There are some of the advantages of forced savings along with the ability to access money if necessary.

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, sign up for Lending Club today and start earning more interest.

The last three days have been quite the blur. Over the weekend my wife and I put in a lot of time researching baby products. There's so many of them. It seems like a vast majority are used for very specialized cases too. It makes me appreciate the simplicity of having a dog.

On Satruday we hit the local yard sales in search of deals. Yard sales are well known for being hit or miss. However, we ran into an additional problem that we didn't anticipate. Almost everything was pink or blue, which is only helpful when you know the gender of the baby, which we didn't. There were some items that looked like they were in tremendous condition, but we had to either let them go or risk having to resell them. We decided to just let them go.

Despite the gender issue, we were able to pick up a few items at the yard sales. At the rate we are going, we'll have most of our stuff bought with months to go. That's one post, I'm looking forward to writing. It will look a lot like this one: The Room that Craiglist and Yard Sales Built. I might even be able to reuse the same title.

Yesterday, we were able to solve our shopping problem. We found out that we'd be having a boy. It's exciting to us, but I won't bore you with more details on that.

Sunday we went to a baby expo that was called, no-joke, Prego Palooza.

Best and Worst at the Prego Palooza

Let's get the bad out of the way first. The worst part of Prego Palooza was the first 45 minutes. I found that it directly compares to watching the first 45 minutes of New Moon, the 2nd of those Twilight movies. Pretty much every male, including myself, were wondering around like zombies. On some level, we were zombies... we simply had the soul sucked out of us.

The expo in general had a bit of a Shark Tank feel to it - many mom and pop small businesses trying to sell their innovative solution to a baby problem. One business opportunity that was overlooked was the convention itself. It may sound counter-intertuitive to sell shots of Jack Daniels at a baby expo, where much of the clientele can't consume the product. However, I can tell you from experience there were a minority who would have put down big cash for a few shots.

There were a couple of great products at the baby expo:

The Rockabye Baby Lullaby CDs were the biggest highlight for me. These are famous rock band songs converted to lullabies. Think slower and more xylophone (as opposed to cowbell). Once you start listening them, it is hard to stop. The best executed in my view were The Beatles and Weezer. My favorite was Tool, though it didn't have Prison Sex and sounded creepy - but in a good way. Other highlights include: Coldplay, U2, Queen, Def Leppard, Pearl Jam, and and many more. The one notable band that I see missing is The Who. Maybe there is a licensing issue holding things up.

Next up was a product that we actually bought: this 6-in-1 blanket from Babee Covee. It is a car seat cover, shopping cart cover, blanket, high chair cover, stroller blanket, and a nursing cover. It's also one of the softest blankets I've ever put my hands on. At $40, it is a little pricey, but some of the nursing covers were just as expensive. Also, I like helping out a local small business.

Another good product that we saw was the Push Pack by Small Batch Studio. It is a kit of travel size essentials for the moment when the baby arrives and you don't have time to pack. While I like the idea, most of the stuff we have at home, so rather than spend the $65 (it was $45 at the show), I emailed myself a link to their website. We'll make a customized version of this ourselves and save a lot of money.

One of the reasons we went to the expo was to learn more about cloth diapering. The biggest thing we learned was that:

Everyone has strong opinions on Cloth Diapering

Without a doubt, the cloth diapering debate is by far the most polarizing topic known to man. When we mention we are going to give it a try the reactions are amazing. The reaction from friends and family who have parenting experience make it sound like it is similar to attempting to complete an Ironman triathlon while balancing an egg on one's nose: "Good luck with that!" is the reaction.

However everybody at Babies R Us and any baby expo says it is an awesome choice, and by far the easiest, cheapest, most practical, best for the baby (less diaper rash) choice one can make. They stop slightly short of building a statue in our honor.

As best I can tell it is the difference between Boston and San Francisco mentality, with Boston being the former and San Francisco being the later.

I'll have more on cloth diapering as we learn more and get some experience with it. There's surely a cost comparison post to write if it works out. Though I'm pretty sure you can find a few of those at The Simple Dollar.

I had a reader ask me about Youngevity the other day. We'll call him Spike. He wrote:

"Have you done any research on the Youngevity products & Dr. Joel Wallach? I have been taking their Tangy Tangerine product as well as the EFA's & Osteo FX over the last 3 months. I read your article on Lifevantage and was very impressed by the depth of your study. Just wanted to see if you have uncovered anything with Youngevity."

I had never heard of Youngevity. However, having looked into other MLM scams, I know one of the first places to look at is the cost of the product. Why? Because MLMs often require their distributors buy product to participate in the opportunity. The artificially expensive product pays the company hefty margins, and distributors often pay the surcharge month after month as a fee for what they feel will make them money.

When I looked into the prices of Youngevity's products, it had all the tell-tale signs of an MLM scam.

The Value of Tangy Tangerine

The first product that Spike mentioned was Tangy Tangerine, a 32 ounce drink that is highly packed with vitamins and minerals. At a cost of around $40 for a 30 day supply it is upwards of $1.25 per serving. I did a quick search on Amazon and found Optimum Nutrition Opti-Men Multivitamins (180-pack) , which was similarly highly packed with vitamins and minerals. I didn't compare specifics of each nutrient, but it was close, more in some areas, less in others. The price on Amazon for Opti-Men is 10 cents a pill and 3 pills are in a serving, for a total of 30 cents a serving. So instead of paying $40 a month for Tangy Tangerine, you could be paying about $9-10 a month. Some of the reviews said Opti-Men was really powerful and there's really no need to take three capsules, so you might find that you can save even more money by taking just one or two. (Side Note: The Opti-Men was the first thing I saw, I bet there's an equivalent women's version that is similar.)

Price per serving: $0.30 vs $1.25 in favor of Opti-Men. That's a save of about 75%.

With Tangy Tangerine, another concern I have is with the marketing of this product. On the bottle it says "with 115 vegetables and fruits." There are no fruit and vegetables in 500mg of powder and certainly not 115. Anyone buying into this claim should take a bottle to their doctor or medical professional (who isn't affiliated with the MLM) and ask them if you can stop eating vegetables because you are getting 115 from Tangy Tangerine. I image they'll find that humorous.

The Value of EPA Plus

Next up is EPA Plus. This supplement is like fish oil, but it is a blend of healthy oils like flaxseed. On the web I found it available for around $30 for 90 capsules, which is equivalent to 90 servings. That's 30 cents a serving. So what's the Amazon near equivalent? It's Omega 3-6-9 Gold. It has the mix of different sources of good fats as well. It is $13 for 180 capsules which turns out to be 7 cents a serving... and at 1200mg it seems to have more oil.

Price per serving: $0.07 vs $0.30 in favor of Omega 3-6-9 Gold. That's a save of about 75% again.

The Value of Osteo Plus

At this point, I got a little tired of searching, so I literally took the first thing that I found on Amazon and it seemed close to the Osteo Plus blend. Specifically, I am referring to: Enzymatic Therapy OsteoPrime Plus. I had to look at another website to get the nutritional information on this product as it wasn't nicely available on Amazon. The nutritional information shows a more diverse blend than Youngevity's Osteo Plus, but with lower amounts of calcium and vitamin D. These are the big things you'd be looking for in a osteo complex, so it looks like a bad fit. However, keep in mind that the Opti-Men product above had additional calcium and vitamin D, plus there's the nutrients that you get from your regular diet. That should make up any difference. OsteoPrime Plus is priced at $17 for 120 capsules. However with 4 capsules per serving that is a 30-day supply on Amazon. The price for Youngevity's Osteo Plus online that I saw was $41 also for a 32-day supply.

Price per serving: $0.57 vs. $1.28 in favor of Enzymatic Therapy OsteoPrime Plus. This time the savings are closer to 55%.

I should mention that these don't seem to be random products that Spike picked out. They all seem to be part of what is calls the Youngevity Healthy Start package. This $112 product has the 30-day supply of all three Youngevity products. The price of this is combination on this site and this site is $112. The later makes it seem like it a value as it normally costs $159.00. Oddly, my research was that buying the products individual only adds up to $84.90, so it seems like the bundled price may work against you. (Note: Lazy Man's fact checking department is below in the area marked comments.)

If the Health Start package is $84.90 a month that's a cost of $2.83 a day. If the real costs is $112, as it seems to be, that's $3.73 a day. The price of the three items that I listed above: 94 cents a day. That's a savings of between 67-75%... or between $689.85 and $1018.35 a year.

The typical case for MLM is that the quality of the MLM product is better than any you compare it to. Clearly if both products were identical Honda Accords you wouldn't pay more. This puts the pressure on the MLM to prove that its product is significantly better. This is where they hire a couple of medical professionals as scientific experts, but the reality is that they are paid spokesmen. What you really need to know when it comes to vitamins is that there's a non-profit organization that you can trust: the United States Pharmacopeia. You'll find these products have USP Verified Dietary Supplement Mark on them. I've talked to a lot of pharmacists and they all say that this is the place to start and end your search for supplement quality... however many admitted to me that standards are generally so good they don't look for it themselves and just buy the cheapest generic brand.

However, perhaps the biggest thing to consider is that recent research is showing that supplements may do more harm than good.

It simply doesn't make any sense to spend more money on something that doesn't seem to work in the first place.

Today, I'll cover one that didn't.

I got an email about Kapitall asking me to look at their Facebook video infographic. I thought that infographics are fairly cutting edge, but this is the first I've seen of a video infographic (3-D infographics and hologram infographics can't be far behind). Curiosity got the best of me, so I watched it:

Before I get to the point that I wanted to make about this video, can we all just have a little laugh at the irrelevancy of one fact in the video? The fact that I'm talking about is that Facebook's users spend enough time on the website each day (combined) to walk to the Sun and back twice. That's a mind-blowing odd thing to claim, but to make it even more crazy, the video shows people taking an escalator to the Sun and back. Clearly that's not an accurate description of walking and how could I have not heard about these Sun escalators before now?

Okay enough of my attempted humor. If I was funny, I might have a career in it and people would probably me for it. They don't.

Let's fast-forward to the 1:50 mark in the video. It shows that Facebook is likely to be priced at $40-50 for a valuation of $100-110 billion dollars. The video then goes to show a few things that you can buy with $50, like 6 movie tickets, 5 packs of cigarettes, or a video game. Then we get to the 2:07 mark where the video makes the case that if you invested $50 in several companies when they went public you'd have a lot more money.

One example is Microsoft. If you invested $50 in Microsoft in 1986, you'd have $18,000 today. The implication is that this is likely to happen with Facebook - especially after they showed you all these amazing Facebook stats. However, the reality is that Microsoft went public as a small company in 1986. Windows had just been released a few months before. Your investment in Microsoft could grow 360 times because you were buying a bigger piece of a company that had a lot more growth in it. (Hindsight is a beautiful thing.)

For Facebook to take your $50 investment and make it worth $18,000 it would have to be worth 36 Trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, the United States' Gross Domestic Product (market value for all goods and services sold) this year is $14.59 Trillion (according to World Bank). Facebook isn't in the same class as other companies like Apple and Google when it come to value today.

The next slide after the Microsoft one is that Facebook is just getting started. That may be, but as the rest of the video showed, Facebook has already had much of its growth spurt. That's already factored into the IPO price with the 100 billion valuation.

There are two lessons to be learned here:

1. Don't buy into the marketing hype with the Facebook IPO - Can you make money by buying Facebook stock? I think there's a chance you could. However, keep in mind that Amazon's value is a little less and Ebay is half of what Facebook is expected to be. I think the chance is the same with these companies as with Facebook.
2. Be critical of sneaky advertising - Kapitall's business is to get people to sign up and place investment trades through them. After watching this video the temptation is to go sign up and put your $50 to work to making you thousands. I'm clearly not against investing, but this advertising is very misleading. It makes me not want to trust Kapitall and further calls into question their claim on their homepage: "We do the heavy lifting. You get fresh market insights delivered daily, and intuitive tools to help you find and choose your stock picks. All for free." If these are the insights that they are offering for free, thanks but no thanks. I'll take my business to another company.

Let's take the sizing of women's pants. The Economist did a little research and found that:

... The average British size 14 pair of women’s trousers is now more than four inches wider at the waist than it was in the 1970s. In other words, today’s size 14 is really what used to be labelled a size 18; a size 10 is really a size 14. (American sizing is different, but the trend is largely the same.)

It makes sense if you think about it. Let's say that Gap has their jeans a half an inch bigger than Levi's. Some people are going to fit in the Gap at a smaller size than Levi's and feel pretty good about how they look and buy those. It's a competitive advantage. The Levi's people aren't going to take it lying down and are likely to leapfrog the Gap. So it continues for a number of years and all of a sudden you have size 10s that are size 14s.

The Economist points out some other examples. "Starbucks coffees are Tall, Grande, Venti or (soon) Trenta." Notice there's no small in there? Having worked at Papa Gino's, a New England pizza chain, 20 years ago, I can tell you it was confusing when a customer ordered a small and the closest options were a kids size and a medium size. Also 5-star hotels have been replaced by 6 and 7 star hotels. "Standard" rooms have been replaced with "deluxe" rooms.

These are all marketing gimmicks to make the customer feel like they are getting some extra value. In reality they aren't. It's some kind of Orwellian Newspeak.

It doesn't end with the products we buy. It's also in our job titles. It's far cheaper for your employer to give you a fancier title than a pay raise. The Economist gives an example of a "Director of First Impressions", which is commonly known to be receptionist. Of course this is nothing new. I can't remember the last time I've heard anyone call a flight attendant a steward or stewardess. That's one that's always confused me. Why did we need to invent flight attendant and not meal attendant to replace waiter and waitress?

It's as if we want to make sure that everyone feels special. Of course if everyone feels special no one is special. But hey, we live in a world where we have to protect everyone's feelings. Students of New York Prep schools can't celebrate getting into great schools anymore because they'll hurt their classmates feelings. And a coach was forced to resign because he played more talented freshmen instead of the less talented upperclassmen.

• MLM awareness - When I was wrote about MonaVie being a scam, I really had no idea that what they were doing was common place in the world of MLMs. Many MonaVie distributors accused me of just being against anything MLM. At the time, I wasn't. However, after reviewing something like 50 companies, I've found zero redeeming value in the entire industry. And this isn't a new thing. You can go back to 25 years to this Money Magazine article and read: The Mess Called Multi-Level Marketing With celebrities setting the bait, hundreds of pyramid-style sales companies are raking in millions, often taking in the gullible. Back then they claimed: The multilevel marketing mess must be contained, if not halted. 25 years later... not much has changed. I hope to change that by exposing the MLM industry at MLM Myth.
• LifeVantage pays Protandim inventor to silence him from exposing their "ongoing fraud" - A little more than a week ago, Protandim's Inventor, Paul Myhill, claimed LifeVantage’s communications are downright false and misleading and perpetuate an "ongoing fraud - one that the SEC and FTC should be made aware of.". A few hours after that long lengthy letter he produced proof that LifeVantage and Dr. Joe McCord Lied about the Creation of Protandim.

  However, on Friday, LifeVantage issued a press release that they made a donation to Myhill's charity (which pays Myhill a salary). Myhill said, "I fully support LifeVantage and its mission, its corporate integrity, its marketing strategy and efforts..." LifeVantage CEO Doug Robinson said, "We also remain committed to conducting our business, as always, with the highest degree of integrity and transparency."

  It's a funny interpretation of "corporate integrity" and "transparency." If you want my best stock tip, it would be to short LFVN. When the SEC and FTC take action it should lead to be big gains. (Note: I'm personally not going to take advantage because I feel like I should be able to expose the truth without bias.)

• Earth Day Freecycle - My city had a great Earth Day Freecycle event again this year. You donate anything that you don't want and others pick it up. Someone donated a Gringott's "piggy" coin bank from Harry Potter. I was able to scoop that up and make my wife very happy. She's a big Potter fan, so our child will be growing up with the stories. This buys me a little leverage to get some Buffy stuff. I'm sure this Gentlemen Bust is going to be too scary. Most importantly we cleaned up a lot of space without devoting a whole day to a yard sale.
• Best Baby Stroller Debate - While on the topic of the upcoming baby, the discussion has turned to the best baby strollers. I was a supporter of the BOB Revolution, while my wife likes the Baby Jogger City Mini. After taking them both for a test drive, I think I agree with the wife. The one hand fold is pretty amazing.
• Red Sox Bad Week - If you ever have had a bad week at work, chances are at least you didn't have as bad a one as Bobby Valentine, manager of the Red Sox. He started of the week with saying something that construed as criticizing one of the fan favorites for his lack of effort. The team lost the next 4 games, one of them by an embarrassing 18-3 score. It lead to this quote from the Valentine, No one has tried to run me over... yet. The day that article was published the Red Sox blew a 9-0 lead in the sixth to their biggest rivals, the Yankees losing 15-9 - one of the worst losses in franchise history. The Red Sox now have a road trip. I hope Valentine got out of Boston without being run over.
• NFL Draft is Thursday - Up until then, I think my time will be split with 1/3rd going to my MLM site, 1/3rd going to this site, and 1/3rd reading about what the Patriots might do. It won't matter, because the Patriots always do the least expected thing and it somehow works out for them.

And here are the personal finance links:

• Digerati Life discusses using debt leverage: should you borrow to get ahead?
• My Dollar Plan explains why it’s a risky idea to raid your 401K in this economy.
• Generation X Finances shares 25 uses for baking soda around the house.
• Money Smart Life goes over how to setup your dream IRA in under 10 minutes a day.
• Cash Money Life looks into how hiring managers screen resumes.
• Free Money Finance on margin and meaning.
• Scott on MONEY asks is liability insurance necessary for your small business?
• Bill Eater blogs invest now for your toddler's retirement?

To educate us on long-term care insurance the workshop brought in a speaker from an outside investment firm, Genworth Financial. However, it wasn't much of an education like the other parts of the workshop. This speaker couldn't have made it more of a sales pitch if he tried. He stressed that each of us is going to need some long-term care at some point, almost as if to create some kind of fear. He brought out the stats that the average cost for long-term care now is $82,000 a year and it is expected to double every 14.5 years. He strongly suggested that we get coverage now if you are healthy, because once you have a health condition, or take a prescription of any kind, you might not be able to get coverage - or you might have to pay more for it.

However, as the speaker explained how long-term care worked, it became clear to me that it didn't seem like a smart financial move. In fact, it seems quite limited. For one example, you don't buy insurance for the rest of your life - you buy a certain number of years of coverage. After that, that's the end of your care... you are on your own. Though the average person uses 3 years of long-term care, an Alzheimer might need 7-8 years. Buying 7-8 years of benefit coverage is obviously more expensive than 2-3. How many years of coverage should you buy? There's no easy way to know.

He also explained that in addition to a set number of years, long-term care plans also have a daily benefit allowance. So you might have purchased $150 a day of coverage for example. If you use only $100 of it a day, you'll get more years of coverage. If you use $200 though, you'll burn through your long-term care benefit faster than expected.

This sounds like a specialized annuity. I might be giving it too much credit - a simple savings account seems to do a similar job (provided you plan fair enough in advance as the speaker suggested we do). I pay money in now so that I can get money out at a later time. However with this annuity/savings account, I have to worry about paying more if my health isn't perfect. Even worse, he said that if the investment company doesn't manage the annuity/savings account long-term care plan well, there might be increases in premiums that have to be paid in. The speaker used this a reason to go with a company with a proven track record... the sales pitch continued. However, this made me want to consider long-term health insurance even less. Think of all the pension shortfalls. Professionals sometimes don't plan for the distant future very well. If they make mistakes, I would have to pay more. What if they managed the money well, would they lower premiums? Perhaps I should have asked that one.

The salesman speaker twice mentioned that Long-Term Care is great because you don't know need to draw down on your other retirement assets like 401k plans, IRAs, etc. I had to stifle a laugh. What are my 401k and IRAs for if they aren't to provide me with income in time of need? I'm not putting money in them so that my bank's computer has can get some digital bits to do a little dance.

The bottom line is that we all have a fixed amount of money to prepare for the future. In my opinion, it comes down to a question of whether my money is best invested in a retirement vehicle or a long-term care one. Long-term care plans will vary, but you should be able to figure out the total value by multiplying the daily benefit by the number of years. For example, $150/day for 3 years would be $164,250 of coverage. The salesman didn't go into what the premiums were for that kind of coverage, but you could take that money put it in your own investments or buy an annuity with it.

If it sounds like you'd be doing better investing it yourself, that seems to be the way to go.

Maggie has used the Nokia Lumia phone and admits that she likes it. At one point she notes, "In fact, I think I'd say that it's even easier to use than an iPhone, which may sound like heresy to some Apple fangirls and boys out there." It also is a high-end phone with all the premium features. However, you know I wouldn't write about it unless a financial factor was part of the decision. Maggie breaks it down:

"But the most attractive thing about the Lumia 900 is the price. AT&T is selling the device, which has 16GB of storage, for $99 with a two-year contract. Meanwhile Apple's iPhone 4S, now six months old, would cost me $200 for the 16GB model. The price difference is only $100, but with Apple's extended AppleCare warranty, the difference is really $200. Given that my last iPhone didn't make it a full two years before it died, that's definitely something I should consider."

So it seems like a no-brainer, right? It's the cheaper and better phone. This has got to be one of the easiest questions Maggie has ever fielded. Not so fast...

Maggie goes on to explain why it isn't so easy in a section called, "Apple's stranglehold on my life." Specifically she says:

"But sadly now I'm feeling a bit stuck with Apple. I'd like to check out other smartphone platforms, but doing so is going to require some work on my part. Like many who have been sucked into Apple's clutches, it was innocent in the beginning. The iPod was so simple to use. And iTunes, while not the best user interface or music service, was also simple and safe at a time when I was too much of a scaredy-cat to be downloading or sharing music illegally.

Initially, I didn't realize the commitment I was making. I didn't think about the fact that I was locking myself into a platform for the rest of my life. But with each new product I bought from Apple, the deeper I fell into the borg. And now I feel like it would be painful to break up with Apple. Not because I love the products or company so much, but because it would be a huge pain in the butt to transfer all my stuff to a new platform."

There lies the hidden cost of your technology buying decisions. A decision that Maggie made years ago, has come back to haunt her wallet. This is why, whenever I buy into technology, I always factor in the decision to migrate away from the technology. I ask myself, "If this company were to disappear or become prohibitively expensive, am I in a position to switch to something else?"

In the end Maggie makes the decision to stick with Apple and only get pulled deeper into the Borg: "At the end of the day, I was impressed with the Lumia 900. I like the Windows Phone OS. And I definitely liked the $99 price tag from AT&T. But for someone like me who is already locked into Apple, it's simply not worth it to go through the struggle of re-establishing my life in Windows Phone for this device."

This time the $200 wasn't enough. I wonder if she's factoring that $200 every couple of years that she remains locked in.