Citizens Against Price Hikes

My latest mission is to find some good personal finance software for the Mac.

I’ve talked previously about the lock-in I have with Microsoft Money, and how I use it on my Windows laptop. But really, I spend more time on the Mac, and in a few weeks I’ll be going overseas and leaving the Windows laptop behind. Time is counting down for me to be able to manage my personal finance on the Mac …

I’ve played around with running Microsoft Money on a virtual Windows XP installation, with Parallels, but my MacBook Pro doesn’t seem to like running it as fast as it runs on the Windows computer. The other alternative is to run BootCamp, but who wants to reboot on a regular basis. Hmmmm …

As I write this, there is great uncertainty over the economy in the West, in the United States and Europe, and the credit crunch, debt levels and falling house prices are causing anxiety and even panic in some.

James Dale Davidson’s book, The Great Reckoning, foretells a depression, and the authors give a 15 step programme on how to get ready for it. Whether it’s coming or not, this is good advice for the risk averse.

15 Steps to Survival and Independence

Step 1. Get committed - be in charge of your own life

Step 2. Involve your spouse - support each other to make life changes

Step 3. Act as if the depression has already begun - save 25% of your income. Stop spending so much.

Step 4. Gather knowledge - knowledge is power

Step 5. Master compound interest - save early, get out of debt

Step 6. Stop shopping - don’t buy anything unless you need it

Step 7. Turn off the television - it is of no help to your brain

Step 8. Connect more closely to family and neighbors - contribute to your community

Step 9. Do not be a victim - positive thinking

Step 10. Watch the calendar, not the clock - think long

Step 11. Treasure your health - it’s all you have

Step 12. Don’t boast - keep a low profile, keep out of danger

Step 13. Help others - have responsibility

Step 14. Defend the open society - keep markets open

Step 15. Tell your children - educate your children on this

These steps are taken from one of my favourite books, The Great Reckoning, available from Amazon, but probably not your local bookshop.

Buy from Amazon: “The Great Reckoning: Protecting Yourself in the Coming Depression” (James Dale Davidson)

George Carlin on consumer capitalism, slave/wage labour and critical thinking.

I have been using Microsoft’s Money personal finance software for over 9 years. My 30MB data file has over 12 years of transactions listed, showing spending, profits, debts and general financial activity over the first years of my adult life.

I rely on Microsoft Money.

I have used Money on a series of Windows laptops I get for work - but in the past 2 years I’ve been using a MacBook as my main machine, at home, and so the only time I get to update money is when I’m at work. I would like a solution that could be used both at work, and at home.

I have installed Parallels to use Microsoft Money at home. It’s only the trial version, and it’s not the fastest. Also, I’m not sure I can justify paying for Parallels just to use Microsoft Money.

I’ve also played with BootCamp, but the re-booting is a hassle.

Anyway, I hope to write more about Microsoft Money over the next few months, and pass on some of what I’ve learned from using it.

Rising Australian interest rates ..

Unlike the United States and Britain, where interest rates have recently been lowered to stave off the credit crunch crisis, interest rates in Australia have been climbing in recent months in a bid to halt inflation.

.. results in unmanageable debt

The result is that hundreds of thousands of Australian households are facing higher repayments on mortgages that they took out when rates were at record lows. These repayments are on top of years of over-spending by low and middle income households, much of it on credit cards, which they are now struggling to repay. A show this month on Australia’s ABC show on the exposure of credit card debt in middle to lower class Australia painted a dramatic and bleak picture for the average Aussie.

The show is available to watch on demand

Sometimes we wonder what it takes to get rich, but Davidson & Mogg suggest it’s not some big secret in avoiding being poor in the Western World. Just finish school, get a job, and keep the kids to a minimum.

The odds in favor of escaping poverty in the postwar United States were 200:1 for anyone who took these three simple steps:

1. Finished High School
2. Refrained from having children out of wedlock
3. Took a job, even if at the minimum wage, and did not quite except to take another job.

These are not mysterious steps that could betaken only by initiates in the higher circles of society. They are common-sense behaviours anyone could follow if he wished. The underclass do not. They choose impoverishing behaviour - “out-of-wedlock births, school inattendance, dismissing a $5-an-hour job as ‘chump change’”
[P.272, The Great Reckoning (1991 Summit Books), James Dale Davidson, Lord William Rees Mogg]

The Great Reckoning was written in 1991, before the mass scourge of credit card and other consumer debt. One point that should be added for the new edition:

Avoid getting into credit card or other high interest debt.

Link: “The Great Reckoning: Protecting Yourself in the Coming Depression” (James Dale Davidson)

I’ve have shelves and shelves of Wired Magazines - going back more than 10 years.

I stopped buying Wired only this year - I felt as though it had run it’s course.

Matthew Hurst writes:

Is the future of physical magazines to go out in an orgy of adverts (as the economics of the model force more and more adverts to be included - as appears to be the case with Wired), or is something which better blends the online and offline experiences, user preferences and on-demand printing and binding technologies. Perhaps Chris has the answer.

[From The Future of Wired]

The original source for the previous post.

[From All of Inflation’s Little Parts - The New York Times]

From Information Aesthetics: The average spending of the average american citizen.

Look at how much is spent on fast food.

an interactive infographic treemap representing how much the average American citizen spends on 84,000 products in about 200 categories, including fast food, car insurance, rent, electricity, garbage collection & so on. larger shapes make up a larger part of spending. individual shapes can be selected & the treemap can be zoomed in & out.

the combination of the organic looking treemap shapes & the encompassing circular form reminds me of the voronoi treemap & circular treemap algorithms respectively.

[link: nytimes.com]

[From average American consumer spending]