May 31st, 2008 Administrator
I’m always open to learning financial gain, so I’m constantly reading investments books. Whether it be real estate, paper investments, or just learning to control finances to for wealth, I’m usually pretty open to new sources of knowledge. I’ve read a few Rich Dad, Poor Dad series of books. All of them an easy read, but always filled with mostly the same common knowledge and cliches repeated over and over durning the book with a few new nuggets of knowledge with each book. The books are always vague and never give any details on how to obtain this wealth. I just figured that more education and experience were needed and the book was just an overview.
I signed up for a Rich Dad Real Estate Investing 3 day Seminar which I had to postpone due to re-locating which had to happen that weekend. This is how they got my phone number. After I missed the seminar, a month later I receive a phone call from a Rich Dad employee. Now pay attention because this is what is good. The way they design the selling process makes it feel selective.
- A Rich Dad employee calls me and asks me a few preliminary questions. Using phrases like, “very selective”, “not everyone qualifies”, “see if it’s the right time in your life”, “time is of the essense, limited availability”. She even asked me to write down some questions to help prepare for a coaching director’s interview. This was all smart because it makes me feel special should I be selected by them because I’m ready to be financially successful. I asked directly, “Is this another service that you would like to offer or sell to me?”. The response was, “No”.
- The follow up interview. The rich dad coaching director calls and says that she needs to interview and verify it’s a good fit (as if). She asks about current financial well being. Asks about our current savings and investments. We (me and my wife) ignorantly answer these questions thinking the concern is actually our financial readiness. She asks about our credit cards and the limits on them and the debt on them. Again my wife and I think it’s about helping our financial well-being.
- She asks about our area of interest for investing, real estate or paper. She asks about whether we would like to know more about leveraging credit to work for us. We answer yes. She touches on using credit cards to our advantage. At this moment I stopped her, and asked, “I was led to believe that it was unwise to use credit cards at such a high interest rate. Aren’t there better forms of leverage to use?”. The answer was, “credit cards are a fantastic way to leverage other people’s money. This is what Robert Kyosaki talks about. Using other people’s money”.
- The saleswoman, I mean coaching director, starts asking sales questions like are you ready to commit. Would you be able to dedicate 7-10 hours per week? We in turn answer an un-enthusiastic, “yes”. At this point I’m waiting for a price and want to know.
- She asks us to write down some commitments. Some they have for us, and some that we must make for them. One was the hours required. I forget two at the moment, because three is where we stopped. The third commitment required from us was the tuition. $5K. She asked if we could afford to pay, upfront, today, before we hung up. Without hesitation it we both replied, “No”. Of course we were met with, “why”, and she brought up repeating my own words, “Now Buck, when talking about your savings you said you had enough $x numbers of dollars. WHAM!!! It all came rushing toward me. This women was in no way interested in my financial ability to be compatible or my financial thinking to be successful for this program, but only feeling me out for the ability to pay. I made mention of this and immediately she went on the deffensive, and quickly the offensive. She started to passive-aggressively insult us. Saying things like, “You’re just procrastinating”. You’ll never be successful with that attitude.
I told her I would never pay $5k for something that I have only heard about for 15 minutes. “That wouldn’t be doing my due diligence”, I told her. My wife repeated that Robert Kyosaki wouldn’t make a deal like that. The saleswoman (she no longer needs the title of “coaching director” at this point) asks if the kind of help and teaching would be worth it, comparing tuition to college. I said of course, but like choosing a college, research is put in before dropping any cash. She asked, “You don’t trust Rich Dad”? My wife and I quickly replied, “NO!”. She asked, “Why not?”. I said, “Trust is earned”.
She was starting to get insulting and I had enough. I told her It doesn’t matter, I would not invest that much cash without research from an unbiased party. She continued on and told us that we were not at the right place in our life for this commitment. This from a woman that had repeatedly told us that we were ready (until she found out we were unwilling to pay). She even tried a slight bit of pressure in the end when I said I would reconsider after some research. She told me the whole interview process would start over. Yea right, if I called and said I’m ready to sign up and here is my credit card number, that would be all that it takes.
This whole process was a bit annoying and could have been avoided had they not lied about my initial question, “Is this another service you are offering or selling?”. All in all very sneaky. Trying to convince me that credit cards were a good way to leverage credit. Finding our credit card limits to find out if we could pay. These were great ways to feel out a potential customer.
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Posted in Rants, info | 1 Comment »
May 14th, 2008 Administrator
I had to relocate for a job recently. Which means I had to find a new gym to join. After looking around, I was a little displeased with the lack of choices in the area where I just moved. I found a gym that was relatively close to my house and had enough amenities. I was really disappointed by the price. My first bill was $57. This is a little steep for the area I moved to. I just came from a more expensive area (South Florida) and my membership was only $35 for the same stuff.
My 30 day trial period
Luckily, Lifestyle Family Fitness offers a 30 day money back guarantee trial. I decided to use the gym and see if I liked it. To be honest, the gym has all the equipment needed. Which is to say the dumbbells go over 110lbs, they have a squat rack, and a bench press. The biggest drawback is they’re crowded, everyday. I decided to exercise my 30 day out. Mostly in hopes they would counter like every other gym I have ever belonged to. Most of the time they want to know the problem, and then offer a solution to fix it. When they asked me why I wanted to quit, and I responded with, “price and too crowded”. Here is where their in-ability to problem solve came in. They were looking for some loop hole to keep me from getting a refund, instead of fixing the problem. Most places would come down in price.
They have plenty of margin to work with…
I came from an area with higher cost of living, much higher taxes, much higher rent and real estate costs. The gym I to which I used to belong has a larger footprint and offers more locations, yet still manages to charge $21 less per month than Lifestyles. Either the gym manager is unable to sell or the business is run so badly that the margins are slim, even at the extremely high prices charged. I’m a little saddened that Lifestyles seemed to have a sales prevention team working the day I quit. Another person may have been able to save a sale by lowering the price to the same level that others are grandfathered in at.
Posted in Rants | 1 Comment »
March 20th, 2008 Administrator
I’m looking to buy a new car. I’m a guy, so I really hate shopping. It’s a pain in the ass.
I’m buying a more family oriented car, which makes it kind of a boring drive. I’m coming from a car that puts down 500 horsepower to the wheels with 540lbs of torque. Family cars just don’t compare, and thus makes it boring to shop for.
Anyways, back to the moron dealers I’ve been in contact with. I put out a request for quote on the official sites of each manufacturer. This was for about 15 different dealerships. All but one have called me back with the following information: “Please call me at your earliest convience”. They also took the time to email the same message.
Wait a minute, didn’t I request something?! Oh Yea! A quote. Guess how many sent me an actual quote without being asked a second time? ONE! One dealer, a Honda dealer, sent me a quote the first time I asked for it. The rest ignored my request, ignored the fact that I requested it online at my convience (my preferred method) and that my preferred contact method was email.
This is annoying! I received countless phone calls during the day disrupting me during work. The very reason I requested online quotes was to avoid the disruption.
Some dealers were even more annoying. When I asked about the new Pontiac G8 GT from dealers, one dealer returned a phone call, and only one. Again, no quote. Just a message about the first shipment had been spoken for and call me.
Why are dealers so secretive about their pricing? If I called any other business that had concrete numbers about the products they are selling, they would have zero problem giving me a quote. Hell, the selling process of the auto insurance business has been turned upside down because of the instant gratification of that progressive pioneered. And that’s not even hard numbers, they have to run the calculation of stats based on questions dumbed down enough for the non-underwriter layman.
The one place to offer me a quote will probably be the place I buy from. I say probably because I’m still debating the make/model of the car. I plan on posting all of the emails from the dealers that I have received and the names of the dealerships.
Posted in Rants, car | No Comments »
January 16th, 2008 Administrator
I love the new Apple TV updates. I wrote about how it may change the HD world. It really bodes well for HD and VOD. There are a few of us that were early adopters and bought mac mini’s for their Home Theater PC (HTPC), and some of us that wanted the extra juice to play their 720P 30 fps or 1080 material.Whatever the reason for owning a mac mini as opposed to an Apple TV, it seems that we are left out in the cold.
Yes, while the Apple TV was busy getting it’s update on, front row users are left with yesteryear’s interface. Of course it’s a computer and I can switch over to iTunes, but let’s face it. When you’re listening to music with friends and want to quickly browse and buy a song you’re all talking about. Breaking out a keyboard is the equivalent of the VISA check commercials when that person breaks out a check. It certainly doesn’t create a one click buying experience, putting more obstacles between me and the check-out lane. That’s the whole point of this, Apple wants to sell rentals and music. The easier they make it to buy, the more they’ll sell, period.
I hope this is on their to-do list. It would certainly encourage me to buy more from them.
Posted in Rants, info, technical | No Comments »
January 16th, 2008 Administrator
The following was a post from apcmag.com
1. 80GB iPod hard drive being used as a system drive. It’s 4200 RPM slow and after years of encouraging people to amass a horde of digital media, how can Apple really expect people to fit their iTunes library, digital videos and so on onto 80GB? With notebook hard drive capacities topping 500GB in a single 2.5″ drive, surely Apple’s customers would have preferred a slightly thicker form factor with a beefier drive?
Really, most people get by on less. Apple’s customers already have this sort of form factor, the MacBook and MacBook pro have been about 1 in thick for years and the lightest available. You want speed, get a SSD drive.
2. Non-expandable memory: 2GB of RAM soldered onto the motherboard… sure, that’s a lot of RAM today, but if I were buying a notebook worth between $2500 and $4300,
Hmmmmm, I looked at the Apple site, says starts from $1799.
(update) Whoops - I saw in the comments of his page that he was talking about Australian dollars.
I’d sure as hell want the ability to add some extra RAM in later to cater for future Mac OS X upgrades, virtualisation and memory hungry apps like the Adobe suite. (To be fair, other subnotebooks also have soldered RAM, and sometimes have only 1GB, but still… looking at this from the perspective of someone looking for a thinner, lighter MacBook Pro, this is a significant limitation.)
If you start with the wrong expectations you will be disappointed.
3. 64GB flash-memory as an option in place of the hard drive is nice, but for $1400 more, it seems unlikely many people will take it up. (Update: reader Jeff Singleton points out that the SSD drive is more than “just a flash drive” — SSD disks offer greatly enhanced reliability and much faster throughput than mechanical media can, which is a fair point.)
Apple fans are notorious early adopters, if they weren’t they would buy Dells with Windows for less.
4. One USB port: not only is the MacBook Air expansion-limited on the inside, it can’t connect to many things at once on the outside, unless, of course, you carry a USB hub with you, which kinda defeats the purpose of having an ultraportable notebook to begin with. And since it’s a recessed design (a flap on the side of the notebook has to pop open for you to access the port), quite a few USB accessories aren’t going to be able to plug in there without the use of a USB extension cord.
Carrying a USB hub would defeat the purchase of an ultra portable, but so would carrying the accessories that would connect to it.
5. No wireless broadband: if anyone’s going to buy this notebook, it’s the regular traveller who is tired of toting 3KG of extra cabin baggage everywhere. These people are also exactly the same people who find wireless broadband really, really useful. But despite the fact that HSDPA modules can be manufactured as small as a postage stamp, Apple didn’t include one. Guess what you’ll be using that one USB port for? A soap-on-a-rope style wireless broadband dongle, or a fat broadband stick. It’s not a very elegant accompaniment to the world’s thinnest notebook.
Guess what you’ll be connecting to your Bluetooth [phone] device for?
6. Underpowered, last-gen processor: despite Apple claiming the MacBook Air has the ‘latest’ processor in it, it’s actually a slow old 65nm version of the Core 2 Duo, topping out at 1.8GHz. Presumably Apple’s legal eagles would argue that since Intel made a special version of the processor that has a smaller chip casing than others, it is literally using the “latest” release from Intel. But in this case, “latest” certainly doesn’t mean “better”.
This is a small definition of better. Faster doesn’t necessarily mean better, but latest is defined by release date. In fact the whole chip industry is moving toward less power. Most individuals don’t need the kind of speed that even apple’s cheapest laptop puts out.
7. No microphone port: sure, it’s not the most essential feature given the proliferation of USB microphones, but again, I’ll point out: one … USB … port.
Bluetooth, bluetooth, bluetooth.
8. Non-replaceable battery: you have to send the entire notebook back to Apple for replacement of the battery. Which will have attrocious battery life within about two years. Note to Steve Jobs: this is not an iPod.
I actually agree, but when the time comes I’m sure there will be a plethora of services to replace/upgrade the battery. (update) The time is now $129 battery replacement includes install. That’s what a normal battery costs.
9. Thin but not that thin: Steve Jobs says the MacBook Air is thinner at its thickest point than competing notebooks. But the Fujitsu Q2010 is only 19.9mm thick at its thickest point, and that’s 0.5mm — yes half a millimetre — thicker. However, in the Lifebook, you get integrated HSDPA/3G/GPRS, an ExpressCard slot (34/54), SD card slot, two USB ports, inbuilt VGA out, Ethernet, Firewire, fingerprint sensor. I’d say that functionality is worth an extra half millimetre.
I must take a look at the Q2010, but using Windows is not worth it. I have never missed Windows since the move.
10. Oh, and no Ethernet port: yeah, OK, you can order the optional USB Ethernet adaptor, but that one time your router stops working wirelessly and you really need to log in via Ethernet to fix the configuration… hope you’ve got that USB adaptor with you.
Spoken like a person who has owned many a faulty PC’s. I have never had an ethernet port stop working on any of my Macs. I have also found my 802.11 N faster than my old 10/100 ethernet. You can also login via bluetooth.
Post mortem: Yes, there are some really nice features of the MacBook Air: the multi-touch trackpad, the fact that it doesn’t have a tiny, cramped keyboard like many ultraportables, some clever workarounds for the fact that it doesn’t have an optical drive — the ability to comandeer another Mac’s drive over a network, and so on.
But the fact is, apart from the screen and keyboard size, everything else in the MacBook Air is a big compromise.
People who were looking for a viable “pro” upgrade path for their PowerBook G4 12″ will be disappointed, as will anyone who wanted a lighter version of the MacBook Pro.
Will it be a success? I’m willing to bet that there will be an initial rush of sales from people who want the hottest, latest, slimmest thing in the airport gate lounge, but for the rest of us, who are balancing the specs with the portability, the MacBook Air will ultimately turn out to be a sales dud.
I disagree with the sales dud comment. I do believe that sales will be lower than that of the other MacBook lines. But the entire ultra portable market is smaller - it’s to be expected. I do believe it will pave the way for the rest of the MacBook line. If Apple were to release a 17 inch ultra portable I would pick it up. I don’t use wires, and I don’t use the optical drive.
This is definitely an early adopter product, and Apple may be on the cutting edge, but that means they have more room to grow rather than to play catch up.
Posted in Rants, technical | No Comments »
January 16th, 2008 Administrator
And no I’m not talking about the CES Warner Announcement of going to Blu-Ray only. I’m talking about Steve Job’s Keynote at MacWorld today.
Most people (including me) have been waiting for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD to win before making the HD Media plunge. No one wants to support a dying or dead medium and having to re-invest in the other. Everyone has been waiting for all of the Studios to support one.
It looked like Blu-Ray was going to win with the Warner Studios announcement of Blu only. I heard Warner’s announcement and thought the last two studios would surely cave toward the Blu camp, and I think they still will make the move to Blu.
Let me Tarantino a bit. I’ve been using a hacked XBox and XBox Media Center for a few years now. I rip all most of my DVD’s on a cheap linux server, soon to become a NAS. I can view all of my movies without getting up from the couch and sorting through 600 or so Discs. As HD-DVD and Blu-Ray started closing in on release dates, I started to think about the possibility of using physical media again. I’ve gotta say, I’m pretty opposed to it. The idea of not having all of my content at my finger tips sounds antiquated. Having to run through the house to find out which room I left a disc in is worse. I am a quality freak. I like the best stuff (at least what I can afford), so I was constantly waiting for a HD format to win. Which by the way is taking forever.
Here comes an announcement from Apple. They’re updating their Apple TV along with a price drop that brings the price lower than Blu-Ray and almost as low as the lowest priced HD-DVD unit. Not only that, but with their new rental service offering HD movies and content from all the major studios, they’re offering exactly what I wanted. All the studio’s content, not having to leave the couch to watch content, or the house to rent it. All of this at a lower price than the current HD competitors.
Apple has it, they have the right combination of offerings to make it work. If they push it correctly it will be a major contender in the HD format. I do think that Blu-Ray will still do well after all the studios commit to the format. Mostly because people are creatures of habit, they will continue to go to blockbuster and rent; they understand - put some sort of media in a machine, press play and it works. Some people just want to do things the way they always have, touch physical media.
Posted in Rants | 2 Comments »
