Sunday, February 22, 2009

Personal Finance in your inbox

Speaking of calculation, I’ve been doing that a lot lately as the economic around the world is going crazy. Many things like oil, currency, stock market are going up and down. I’m sure many of us are getting sea sick and throwing out a lot. If you’re in debt with the bank because of your car loan, housing loan or maybe refinancing, you might just want to recalculate your financial status. In fact if you seriously want to calculate your personal financial, here’s a personal finance software form Rudder that you can try out. Yes, it’s free and you can try it out. This online money management rated as the best products in 2008 and the top real world web apps of 2008. It also features in CNBC, the wall street journal, TechCrunch and many other press. Unfortunately this software seems to be created to suit people that live in US. But then that doesn’t mean it can’t be use by others. As it’s a free service, it doesn’t hurt to try it out.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The one thing that we do every day is calculation

We calculate, the moment that we wake up we start calculate how much time we have for breakfast without getting later for work. We calculate how many days left before holiday and we calculate how much we earn. Furthermore we even calculate how much we have to earn in order to buy a house, a car, getting married, have kids, education, medication, vacation and most of all retirement. Seriously you might be able to get all the calculation done nicely or perfectly but the thing is it’s a never ending calculation. The equation changes as life goes on. Life is unpredictable and everything changes, the only thing that you can be sure about your calculation is right now at this moment. At the end of the day or after you wake up next day in the morning, the answer you calculated expires. New day new calculation, thus we keep on doing the math of our life.

Here’s an online converter that might be helpful if you’re always doing the calculation. It might not be that perfect but we can go for the best that we can get. The more calculation has been done the lower the risk or the safer the path.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Watching Grey’s Anatomy Online at Cucirca

Grey’s Anatomy is one of my favorite US television medical dramas. Several television channels in my country always compete to air the latest season of Grey’s Anatomy. In order to catch up with the latest viewing, I have to keep up with the channels competition too. Still if you’re not staying in the US, you’ll always be one season late. Lucky for those that have an internet broadband connection, we can almost have the first view of the latest episode right after the drama is air. The latest season of Grey’s Anatomy that I’m able to catch on my country is season 4. Currently I’m waiting for season 5 to be air but I don’t think that will be happened soon.

Dragging by my desire to continue my medical drama addiction, I did a quick search on Google to see if I can watch the drama online. It turns out the first site from Google search result is able to let me watch the drama online. The site is called Cucirca and has all Grey’s Anatomy seasons and some other famous US drama as well. Putting the legal issue about copyright aside we can see that as the speed of the internet connection is increasing, it is possible to have online video, which means television is not the only channel to watch your favorite movies or drama. You can watch it on your computer or laptop too.

No doubt that the possibility of watching the same television show online is there and it seems to happening now. The big question is how they can control the airing and copyright. This involves a lot of money and it won’t be easy. Even so this is a trend that can’t be stop as we all know that many already has access to all the latest movies and television drama as long as you know where to find them. Actually similar case happens before when the internet speed is fast enough to transfer a MP3 song. It shouldn’t be a surprise any more as it just a repeated incident. The difference is that how we make full use of it.

As for viewers around the world, it is great to be able to watch the latest season or episode of the Grey’s Anatomy.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Calculate your own personal financial report for free

Here’s a wealth manager that enable you to estimate and calculate your personal financial report. The Chat is simple. All you need to do is fill in your monthly investment, return in % and other expenses. The expenses are cars, property, education, wedding engagement and so on. You can just play around with it as the chat changes as you insert your investment and put up your expenses. You will be shown graphs of liability, investment and property assets. Calculations are between the ages of 30 to 85. It’s a simple estimation but at least this will gives you a brief idea on how your financial situation is. Many of us did not actually sit down and think about the money that is needed in future, or shall I say plan on the money that we earn for future usage. This is actually very important, especially you plan to get married and wanted to raise couple of kids. You need to actually calculate if you’re able to earn enough money for shelter, food and education. There is a video clip on the site that shows you how this wealth manager works. Have a look and try it out. This may give you a good start on how to budget and plan your personal financial.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

StarBucks does not have my cup of coffee

If you’re going to have a regular cup of coffee, which coffee shop will you go for? If you ask me, I’ll say any normal coffee shop is better than StarBucks. That’s true and I’ll say it again. StarBucks is not on my list of regular good old black coffee to go for. Not to mention that their price of a regular coffee is way more expensive than others, it still doesn’t taste good. Unless I’m going for a cappuccino, latte or mocha, I might think about StarBucks. Seriously, it just doesn’t sound right for a famous coffee shop around the globe to not have a good regular cup of coffee.

If you’re not sure about this, just do a simple test. Gather 4~5 of your friends and each purchase a cup of coffee from various coffee shops including StarBucks. Change the paper cup so that all 5 cups of coffee looks the same. Of cause you need to do a marking so that you remember which cup of coffee is from StarBucks. Pick some of you friends to taste the coffee and decide which coffee taste better. I’ll bet you that coffee from StarBucks won’t turn out winner. The above test might just be too troublesome, to make it simple just buy a cup of regular coffee from MacD and StarBucks. Taste it yourself and you’ll know what I mean.

I saw an article about consumer reports picks the best cup o’brew from Yahoo and makes me wonder we might just paying too much for a cup of regular coffee. That’s my thought about the coffee that I tasted. How about you?