America’s Top Financial Planners

Woo-hoo! I’ve been listed as one of “America’s Top Financial Planners” by the Consumer’s Research Council of America. At least that what the mailing says. Oddly, the letter seems to only want me to purchase a commemorative “museum quality” plaque. There is no survey, no application and as far as I can tell, no nomination process. So how did I become one of America’s top financial planners anyway? I’m a small boutique shop that a research outfit would surely overlook.

Make Money Fast

I would hope nearly all of The Long Run blog’s readers know instinctively the problems with pyramid schemes and their fellow traveler the “multi-level marketing” errr “opportunity”. The Internet is always adapted by the MMF (that is to say the “make money fast”, not “money market fund” or “male/male/female”) types. Back before the web, when USENET was the social media venue of choice for many, the scourge of USENET was the “make money fast” post. Wiki has a pretty good history of it. Cult animator Mike Jitlov did an enduring parody of it called “Big Money Now“. (Be sure to click the “hit space bar” links at the bottom to get the whole uber long work of art.)

The irksome version of “going green”

This will be a short one.

It seems everyone, everywhere is “going green”. This usually consists of going “paperless” by sending invoices and account statements electronically. I’m all for that.

What irks me is when retailers print lots of posters, signs, banners, end-caps and other in-store promotional materials just to tell me they are “going green”. What also irks me a great deal are companies that find it important enough to put something like “XYZ co is proud to be green” in all their electronic communication, then attaches the forms you need to renew your policy/account/billing info etc. Of course, those electronic forms must be printed and mailed or faxed back. This is what is known as “greenwashing”- promoting the intangible niceties reflected by green initiatives without actually accomplishing anything green. Most often, these activities merely shift the cost of printing to you rather than truly eliminating paper and ink from the process.

This irks me almost as much a the prolific tip jar that springs up everywhere from coffee shops to fast food joints and just about every service counter in America. But that’s a rant for another day.

Finally a stimulus plan that works

Finally a stimulus plan that will save America. Or at least that’s how the email reads. I’ve seen it too many times now, that I just have blog about it. Some genius’ plan goes like this:

Reflecting on Y2K. Ten years on. Thirty eight years on.

I used to write an Internet column for a daily newspaper in Toronto. I started writing it in 1995. Back then web browsers were new fangled ways to access the Internet, although I was certain the Web was just a fad and Gopher and FTP were the way to go. To toot my own horn, I was the first person in Canada to write a regular column about the Internet for a Canadian daily paper.

Data Security at Financial Institutions

Would someone please explain the security procedures that banks and other financial institutions implement? I happen to run into a “verification process” quite frequently. This normally entails answering a series of questions. You know, questions like “what city did you get married in?” or “what is the first name of your paternal grandfather?” There seems to be about 15 standard questions used by financial institutions, not all of which are used by each. My problem with these has to do with a lack of understanding exactly how they are supposed to protect me.

Dot Com Week – a personal history

If you didn’t guess from Julio’s post, we decided it is “dot com week” here at TLRB. Actually, we are a week early- the true top of the dot com mania was officially March 10, 2000. We used the NASDAQ’s all time peak to call the date. More specifically, the index stood at 5,048.62 which is a stunning figure compared to today’s 1,321 and 2,000 around Thanksgiving, 1998.

Not This Email Again: Gas War!

I just keep getting this email forwarded ad infinitum.  You know the one- that email that tells us how to beat the oil companies at their own game by starting a price war.  Here are the pertinent excerpts from the email:

GAS WAR! Join the resistance!

Flattery Scams

I remember back in the late 1980s on Detroit’s Channel 50 there being this reoccurring infomercial featuring spray-on hair. Basically if you were getting thin in back or on top and you had, I dunno, lacquer black hair, you could get this can of spray paint and then simply spray it on the more noticeable bits of flesh tone. It was a ridiculous product and, given the appearance of the test subjects this infomercial featured, this product was mostly marketed to long haul truckers.

The way this infomercial sold this spray-on hair formula was formulaic. They’d get a long haul trucker out of the audience, comb his hair a bit, determine the appropriate “spray shield” to use (basically a piece of cardboard with various sized holes cut into it), and then give his bald spot a couple blasts of spray-on hair. And here’s the part me and all my other 17-year-old friends loved. They’d bring out this busty woman in a short sequined dress. She would inspect the head of the long haul trucker for about 3 seconds and then moan on command “ohhh, it looks so natural”.

Job Scams

My friend Roseanne is back in the job market and she’s been applying for jobs. She’s an executive assistant (EA) by trade, which means she works under high powered business executive types who are also highly fickle. Think of Elaine from Seinfeld, think of Elaine’s boss Mr. Pitt. Anyway, she necessarily gets fired a lot for picky weird reasons. Skirts are above the knee this fall and she’s wearing skirts below the knee. That kind of stuff.

Watching Roseanne’s job hunt the last couple weeks reminds me of employment scams. People in need, be it a need for a job or a need for a cancer cure, are always viewed by some as needing to be deprived of their money.