Suze Orman's Personal Finance Advice: Quit Your Job

Here's a fairly dramatic encounter from this afternoon's Suze Orman Show. "Mike" works as a credit manager selling consolidation loans for a "major banking institution." A 22-year-old MBA, Mike calls people with substantial credit card debt (owed both to his own employer and to other lenders), and tries to get them to move their unsecured debt into car or home loans with lower interest rates. Mike had written into the show because he had ethical qualms about selling people potentially disadvantageous products. Suze conducted her interview with Mike's silhouette in order to "protect his job." She made two cases against this type of loan consolidation: a) a car or home, unlike unsecured debt, can be seized by the bank; b) the maturity terms of mortgage and auto debt mean the person will likely end up spending more. Here's a portion of their exchange: Suze: I would feel far more comfortable with somebody who has credit card debt that is high going to somebody like a [Consumer Credit Counseling Service], consolidating that debt, getting them to reduce their interest rate, pay CCCS so that in five years you're through with this debt, and keep all my secured assets exactly that, secured, so no matter what happens I know that I in fact can keep my car and keep my home and that's what I want to do. Whenever you give people an option to pay less, they will take that option. That's how we got into trouble to begin with. But you know, Mike, as you said, I think you knew all of this; that's why you wrote in to the Suze Orman Show. But now that you've heard if trom me what do you think you are going to do in regards to your job? Mike: Well, uh, first thank goodness I have a job. But I'll definitely have to go back and think things over. Because, I don't know if I put that in my email, but that's one thing I always wanted to be was a financial advisor. You are somebody I look up to as an established financial advisor. But it's definitely something I'll have to go back and think about. Suze: Mike, here's what I learned after all the years, and it's been thirty years now really that I've been doing this, is this: that it's better to do what's right than to do what's easy. And I understand that you need a paycheck. I understand that in this economy what are you gonna do? But if you make money off of telling people to do something that in the long run hurts them, that will only come back to bite you in ways that are far beyond what money can buy and what money can do for you. That's why I have never in my career made a move with somebody else's money that was good for me before it was good for them. Thanks, Mike, so I did just want to protect you, but honest to God, it makes no sense. Mike: Right, when I took the job it was a little bit like, what is it? And like I said I wanted to be a financial advisor, so of course I analyzed it a little more than my fellow employees did, and I was like: I would never do this, why are they doing it? Suze: Bingo, Mike! Bingo, and listen, you have to understand there's a big difference between a financial advisor and a financial salesperson. Don't you feel like a salesperson? Mike: That's all I am right now. Suze: Under the guise of being a so-called financial advisor or representative of this major bank. Again, when are the banks going to get it, that they have got to put people's interest at heart before they put their own bottom line at heart? And until they do that, this economy will never ever turn around. Good for you, boyfriend. Mike: You're exactly right. Suze: Bingo! [Italics, and transcription, mine] I don't feel one way or another about personal finance celebrity Suze Orman, and I only learned today, while watching her show for the first time, that her first name is pronounced "Siouxsie" and not "Siouxs." Her advice seems sound enough, and she appears willing to strike a balance between respecting her callers' desire to buy stuff and advising them whether they can afford it. (For example, she "approved" one guy to buy a 1970 VW Beetle for $5,500 even while advising him that he was massively overpaying for the vehicle, on the logic that given his personal balance sheet he could afford the $5,500.) But I'm gonna have to go ahead and ... disagree with Suze on this job advice. Mike is right: He's just a salesman right now. His job is to sell debt consolidation. To say he has an ethical obligation to stop selling the bank's products is like saying a lawyer should only become a prosecutor or an actor should only play good guys. Mike may have ethical concerns about his job, but they are no different than the concerns of a salesman who decides he can't sell porn or booze or cigarettes: They exist solely within the confines of Mike's own head. In fact, when he makes "a move with somebody else's money" it's the bank's money, not the borrower's. So he does have an ethical obligation: to his employer. And because Suze is informally giving Mike advice, I'd say she served him poorly by implying that he needs to stop doing what he's doing. Not just because it means he loses his paycheck but because a 22-year-old MBA should be doing anything he can to learn about finance, particularly if he eventually wants to become a personal financial advisor. (And if he does, he should steer his clients away from this type of loan consolidation, for exactly the reasons Orman says.)

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Viimased uudised Gizmodost: CatGenie Litter Box: The Clean Fresh Smell of Civilization's Discontents [Review]

Ever since the Egyptians invented zero, curmudgeons have argued that technology creates as many problems as it solves, but I've never encountered a product that does exactlythat, until now. I'm talking about a litter box. We all know there are plenty of products that cause more problems than they solve. As a professional technologian, my job is to sift through innovations to see which ones make for an improved life, and which ones are too troublesome for their own good. CatGenie—pardon the pun—gives me pause. After spending a month with it, I declare that it is the perfect zero-sum innovation. Every single advancement comes with drawbacks. While my wife and I no longer suffer from any of the problems associated with a traditional litter box, we are beset with an abundance of unanticipated others. CatGenie is one of these SkyMall-type gadgets that bills itself as the "World's Only Self-Flushing, Self-Washing Cat Box," tossing in, for good measure, a weighty promise: "Never touch, smell, or buy cat litter again." You install it easily by splicing the cold water line from underneath your toilet, running a waste tube up around the lip of the same toilet, and plugging the contraption into the wall. You pour in beads that resemble litter enough that cats get the idea, and you click in a replaceable cartridge of cleaning agent. When the automatic cleaning cycle is engaged, a mechanical scooper removes the poo, and detergent-infused water floods the box and then drains, taking any trace of funk with it. The moistened beads are then blown dry, like Ron Burgundy's hair, as a sweet floral scent fills the bathroom and any adjacent living quarters. The crap in the toilet is easily flushed away, as long as you remember to do it. Compared to the alternative of sifting out chunks from a litter box and tying them off in environmentally uncool plastic bags, this is a beautiful promise. Because of the automatic setup, there's no chance of getting punished by your cat for forgetting to clean a box frequently enough. Everything I described above happens exactly as billed. And even our dumb neurotic brother-and-sister act somehow figured out how to use it very early on. They weren't even intimidated by the swirling Sarlacc pit that it becomes during cleaning. My key initial fear turned out to be totally baseless. So why does the thing make me yearn for the days of the scoopable Arm & Hammer, even though PetNovations Ltd says there are 82,940 households already enjoying this contraption? When I first watched the cleaning cycle, with my gadget-lover's grin, I marveled at the swirling and churning and slooshing and clacking. I kept marveling for about 15 minutes, by which time my grin had soured, and I was looking at my watch. By minute 25 I stormed out of the bathroom in annoyance, came back at minute 35, shocked that the thing was still doing its business, and then returned again, sometime after it had stopped, roughly 40 minutes after it had begun. CatGenie recommends that for two cats, the process should run two to three times a day. That's two solid hours of cleaning cycle. The installation is stupid simple, but you need to be within 8 feet of both a power jack and a toilet (or laundry water line and drain). If you think that's easy, stick your head in the bathroom—very few have power jacks anywhere near toilets, and I had to run my power cord up along the back of a sink. It's not a hazard, but it looks like Wilson's Amateur Home Improvement Show down there. CatGenie is also massive. Its basin has about half the volume our cats are used to, but because of its wide surrounding lip and the tower of machinery, the system is probably 25% larger than a good-sized plastic litter box. After a few days, we discovered an interesting characteristic of the non-toxic litter beads: They do not absorb odors. Right around 8:30 every morning, our big male cat, Wade, comes trotting up the stairs with a combination guilty/relieved look on his face, and soon after, we are engulfed in a sickening stink. Mind you, the cats' depository is an entire floor away down the stairs in the guest bathroom. Scooping the offending dung into the toilet would defeat the purpose of owning a robotic litter box. ("Never touch litter again," they promised.) My sole move is to, yep, run the damn machine. Only the problem doesn't go away instantly. In fact, it gets worse before it gets better. As the detergent floods the basin containing Wade's leavings, the whole thing becomes a savory poop stew. Even when we run the fan in the bathroom, the smell is unbearable for about 10 minutes, after which it disappears instantly, replaced by the machine's pleasant perfume. I kept telling myself that these problems are just growing pains, things to get accustomed to. CatGenie is not as messy as a litter box. There's none of that residual ammonia smell that you can't get rid of permanently, and for the most part, none of the crusty extras that come from overzealous (or just misguided) burying. The plastic beads manage to find their way all over the house, and I am embarrassed to confess, our 1.5-year-old kid manages to stick one in her mouth about every two weeks, but they are non-toxic plastic beads after all, and nothing that can't be vacuumed up. At least, I once told myself, there are no more plastic bags full of poop and urea headed out to some landfill. I read somewhere once that San Francisco had solved something like 90% of its trash problems, and that the remaining 10% was cat and dog poop in plastic bags. (Not the actual stats, btw.) At least by switching to a bagless litter system like this, I'm being environmentally kosher, right? Not in the least. During every cleaning cycle, CatGenie runs a built-in hair dryer over all the beads for about 20 minutes. I plugged in my Kill-a-Watt meter and discovered this demanded a constant and alarming 1160 watts of electricity. For up to an hour per day, I am running the equivalent of four large plasma TVs, just so I don't have to touch litter. The costs start to mount. Besides the up-front $300 and the daily running of water and electricity, the $15 cartridge needs to be replaced every 60 cycles—that is, every 20 to 30 days. And the scatter-prone beads need to be replenished every three to six months, at $24 per carton. Like an inkjet printer, the maintenance costs continue forever, making the notion of buying a $7 box of Arm & Hammer every two weeks seem all the more reasonable. Despite all these negatives, a great debate rages in my household: I would like to return to the olden ways of scoop and bag, and my wife says, "No." Her argument, a good one, is that the bathroom has never stayed cleaner. Guests have to step around an awfully large contraption, but at least "it doesn't feel like you're walking into a barn." As Sigmund Freud once explained, moving from the wilderness to the towns didn't solve humankind's problems, it just swapped out the rustic difficulties for more urbane ones. His conclusion, though, was that while life still sucks, there's a reason we don't move back to caves. After experiencing a more civilized litter box, I can't revert to scooping poop, but I impatiently await the next evolutionary leap in cat sanitation. [Product Page] In brief: After cleaning it's amazingly fresh Cats took to it almost from the start Sounds like the TARDIS when it runs (could be a minus for some but not me) Easy installation Can run automatically up to four times per day Empties into toilet that must be flushed Non-toxic clean beads get all over house Beads don't kill odor It's huge and must be stationed near toilet and power plug Self-cleaning cycle runs over 40 minutes, smelly at the start and hot at the end Hot-air bead dryer demands 1160 watts of electricity for about 20 minutes No way to stop cycle once it has started

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Viimased uudised Gizmodost: Pegasus Open 50, The Official Transpac Raceboat of Gizmodo [Summer Fun-nology]

Philippe Kahn founded Borland, invented the Camphone, and decodes human motion. He's also a fellow outdoorsman, splitting time skiing Tahoe and sailing in Santa Cruz. He'll share his Transpac 2009 sailing race with us live from the Pegasus Open 50. The Pegasus starts the 2009 race, from Los Angeles, CA to Honolulu, Hawaii, this Sunday. But final preparations are being made, including weather analysis and route planning, both computerized and decisions made by experienced humans. For now, read this interview Philippe gave us while aboard the boat, during the race, in 2007 (the first year he raced with the Open 50). Soon, I'll have video tours of the boat. How do you stay connected out in the ocean? It's hard to type... Small boat, big motion, big fingers... So excuse the typos etc...There are several satellite communications systems; weight and power consumption matter a lot. The practical ones for a project like this are the Iridium network and the Inmarsat Fleet-33 system. The bandwidth is limited, to say the least: 2400 baud for Iridium, 9600 baud for F-33s, but Iridium is far more reliable and completely global. The challenge is also that these systems lose their connections. And of course, with that kind of latency, all standard email and download systems fail and get into endless loops. Latency just kills them as they try to eternally restart operations that never complete. We use systems that pick-up where they started after a connection is dropped to remedy those short comings. Yes, those systems are generally 'line of sight ' and as long as there is not a massive storm it will work well, similar to Direct-TV. Iridium and Inmarsat are the main makers. They are not really water resistant, but pretty rugged. We protect it carefully. Everything is redundant on the boat except the F-33 that is a luxury that we enjoy once in a while when it works. Tell me about the Boat. The boat is all ultra light made out of the strongest and lightest pre-preg carbon fiber, the same methodologies of fabrication as the Boeing Dreamliner. The small cabin-pod that you can see on the drawing has a roof-top made out of kevlar so that it is not a Faraday cage. As the rest of the boat is made of carbon and there are many sensitive parts, like high precision stabilized compasses, running networks for sharing information between sensors and devices is tricky. We end-up using Cat 5 wiring, ethernet-style. And that is what connects the sat phones to the laptops and how I am sharing these emails with you. This is like a little spaceship. In fact, that is what people say when they see the boat. It's made for two guys who want to work hard and take some risks to compete with fully crewed yachts with tens of professionals sailing. So it is light and designed to make everything doable by two. How are you charging you gear? What kind of electrics are on the boat? Does the weight hurt your performance? The boat has high performance batteries that get recharged by running the main engine as a generator. We run the engine a couple of hours a day to get enough charge. Weight is the enemy in these kind of boats. So we keep everything to the bare minimum. What would the difference be without all the electrics? The Sextant is a super handy Gizmo. Yes, you can get a $99.95 GPS and think that you know where you are, but you wouldn't know about the stars, the planets, the moon and the sun as you do if you are proficient at finding your position anywhere in the world with a sextant. And that is really where we are, in the midst of the stars and the planets. That's where we live... I combine my Tamaya sextant with their celestial calculator so that I don't need to carry all the site reduction tables. I tell you, at a party with smart hip people, you get more attention with a sextant than you got attention with an iPhone a month ago. Kids love it. Sophie, our 10 year old, is always eager to go and take a planet or a star site. It's really fascinating to her. I have a Suunto watch with a barometer, my sextant and always with us a hand bearing compass. If all fails, that will work. It's important to know how to use those tools and like them. How are you and co-sailor Richard Clarke taking shifts? We really are flexible. Right now, I'm on watch, trimming, checking, navigating, taking care of things, writing email... I'm letting Richard sleep as long as he needs to because conditions are fairly stable. When things get hairy, none of us gets any sleep. It's an exercise in sleep deprivation. [From the blog: "by the way, we get both less than 4 hours of sleep every 24 hours"] More to come. [Team Pegasus] Previously, in 2007 and 2008:

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Did 'America's Got Talent' Find its Susan Boyle?

Hard-pressed to discover its own elusive Susan Boyle, America's Got Talent, some observers say, may have found what it's looking for in the person of an unemployed chicken-catcher from Mayfield, Kentucky. Thirty-five-year-old Kevin Skinner strutted into the stage in a gray wool jacket and washed up jeans. In the introduction, he said he plays the guitar and writes songs. "In the country, things move just a little slower than they do in the big city. I'm a down home kind of country boy. I like hunting fish. It can get real interesting. It's nice to sit out on the porch. You know, a good place to gather all your thoughts and maybe even count some stars. When I go out on stage, I hope that the crowd will like what I'm doing."

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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - on sale from $10.19

The New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell introduces an exciting marketing theory called the "tipping point: " a simple social phenomenon which promises to have profound implications for how we view business strategies, social problems, even...

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Other things that go boom: Live explosion show at science center

Reminding all of a July 4th fireworks alternative -- but one that still packs kaboom! It's the return of Big Bang live explosions show at Orlando Science Center. Dr. Boom (in picture above) sets up shop in OSC's Darden Theater...

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Super Paper Mario - from $28.98

Super Paper Mario begins a new chapter in Nintendo's whimsical hand-drawn adventure series, one that finds the mustachioed mascot in a familiar quest to rescue Princess Peach from the claws of one big, bad Bowser. Things quickly take a...

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Michael Bay On Megan Fox: She Can Say Some "very ridiculous things"

Looks to me like Fox is getting,...well...cocky. At least she's a realist, though. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Megan Fox voiced her real feelings about the film that turned her into a star virtually overnight. “I can’t s**t on this movie because it did give me a career and open all the doors for me. But I don’t want to blow smoke up people’s a**. People are well aware that that this is not a movie about acting.” Well, she isn't known for her ingenuity; but at least the girl is honest. She has a lot to owe to Michael Bay, and if I were her, I would keep my mouth shut, or at least refrain from using "Sh**" and "a**" in an interview. We've previously reported how sentimental Director Michael Bay has gotten in the past when he's had to come to the defense of his summer blockbusters; this time was no different. Seems Bay took what Fox said pretty personally. “Well, that’s Megan Fox for you. She says some very ridiculous things because she’s 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do...“Nic Cage wasn’t a big actor when I cast him, nor was Ben Affleck before I put him in Armageddon. Shia LaBeouf wasn’t a big movie star before he did Transformers - and then he exploded. Not to mention Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, from Bad Boys...Nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her and put her in Transformers. I like to think that I’ve had some luck in building actors’ careers with my films.” Michael Bay is certainly very modest, isn't he?

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the eric update - day 1826: visiting the kitchitikipi ( the big spring ).

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the things I miss watching everything on tivo.... (maggies meanderings and shameless p)

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