Energy saving tips for today's economy.courtesy Food Network

With the recent downturn in the economy and increase in gas and fuel price everyone is looking for money saving tips. These money saving tips could be energy saving tips or gas saving tips or even grocery saving tips. In my previous post I talked about a healthy and moderately priced dining out options in the rough economy and recommended Sweet Tomatoes.

Lets see some myths transform into energy saving tips.

Ever thought of cooking salmon in a dishwasher or cooking an egg over your car engine?
Recently while watching the Food Detective Show on Food Network TV I came across these crazy ideas or myths as you call it.
Ted Allen runs the show covering myths around food and drinks along with some not so usual energy or money saving ideas.

How to cook a salmon in a dishwasher:
1. Take an aluminum foil and then apply some olive oil at the bottom.
2. Lay your raw salmon on the oil and then apply some lime juice over the salmon.
3. Carefully cover it up with one more layer of aluminum and then wrap it up nicely so that soapy water does not get in.
4. Load it in your dishwasher with all those dirty dishes.
5. Start your dishwasher with the normal or full cycle.
6. Sit relax and enjoy! At the end of the cycle take out the covered foil and unwrap to see what happened to the salmon !
Food Network claims nicely cooked Salmon thanks to the heat that the dishwasher creates to properly sanitize the dishes.

Late for breakfast , got to get to work quickly? Take that egg break it up and carefully wrap in layers of aluminum foil layered with olive oil and open your car hood. Place it on an engine so that the aluminum bundle with the egg in it does not spill over parts of the engine. The car hood should hold your egg with all the aluminum is in place.

Drive to work , your egg's ready.

I have not tried any of these saving tips but thought these as being quite unusual and worth sharing.

What are your thoughts?

Dining in today's economy

Image courtesy: http://www.souplantation.com


As most of us know Sweet Tomatoes is one of the famous salad chains in northern US.
"Sweet tomatoes", "Sweet Tomatoes coupon", searches are on an increase in today's economy. I made a quick google adword tool keyword search on Sweet Tomatoes. I saw the second most searched word for the keyword "Sweet Tomatoes Coupon".
Is this the result of people looking for cheap dining options?

If you are looking for a cheap option to dine out with the opportunity of eating healthy Sweet tomatoes is a great option. For around $7.5 for lunch along with a chance to get 10-15% off if you join their veggie club one gets a choice of plenty of fresh salads.

Feeling bored with eating the same salads? Sweet Tomatoes has been creative in creating an Asian week or a Mexican food week where customers get to taste some delicacy.

We recently got a chance to visit the Sweet Tomatoes Asian Week and we thoroughly enjoyed the Asian Ginger broth Soup.

Looking for some Sweet Tomatoes coupons? Type "Sweet Tomatoes coupons" or check out links like this.

If you have more of such ideas please feel to free by leaving a comment. Thank you.

Promote high traffic blog using StumbleUpon

Slightly shifting from my normal finance entries this note is about promoting a blog in general. Recently I came across Problogger's how to promote young blog and have started taking steps towards the same. The big catchaway to promote young blog to become a high traffic blog is to network on StumbleUpon. I have been a passive user of stumble upon.

Leaving the "Stumble Upon" issues aside I am starting the network on StumbleUpon to attract people with similar interests.

Sane Investing in an Insane World - review

Recently I have been reading this book . Definitely some takes and some "non" takes from the book. Cramer goes over different stocks to be purchased at different times in the economy. Once an industry is picked , next is the choice between various companies within it.
Here are some guidelines that are outlined in the book for comparing stocks in an industry
1. P/E ratio, this seems to be the #1 principle.
2. Growth rate of a company: Online sites like thestreet.com or reuters or yahoo finance will list the rate the company is growing. This should be in sync with the growth rate.
3. Dividend comparison: Yield is the trick, Compare yield vs. the actual dollar amount of the yield.
4. Think outside the box: Real business world. Are there some take over or other orders lurking for the company?

5. How does the company perform vs. S&P 500. A bargain is a company with P/E lesser than the industry but has better sales and earnings faster. For example in the current market non cyclical stocks would normally outperform the other ones in the market.

As an example Coke vs. Pepsi comparison is listed at http://seekingalpha.com/article/91789-coke-vs-pepsi-cramer-s-mad-money-8-19-08 Seeking Alpha

More useful tips coming up in the upcoming blog(s).

Disclaimer : Author does not hold KO or PEP at the time of writing the blog and is provided as an example.

Your money or your life

Recently glanced through this book, especially the section covering the crossover point which signifies "financial independence" after mymoneyblog wrote up an article on this. This point dictates the start of financial independence when your passive income (income generated not by working at a job or business) exceeds your expenses.

The author describes the crossover point by means of this simple figure.




Figure courtesy of the book : "Your Money or Your Life" and mymoneyblog.com.

The author uses the treasury note rate of return to calculate annual return of investment.


Consider the savings invested 60% in one year CDs and 40% in stocks will earn an interest/rate of return of around 4% and 6%(typically stocks should return more) to give an average of 5 % rate of return.

$100k will earn $5k per year or $416 per month before taxes. In reality it will take a long time before which the monthly investment come will touch the line of tip over of financial independence which is the expense line.


However I see that a few milestones could be derived from this discussion. Complete financial independence is the ultimate goal but there could be minor goals on the way. One common example is grocery or eat out bills. This I call as food independence as seen in this example.



There could be other milestones built on the same fundamental idea.

Essentially an individual would like to track the performance of passive investment making some intermediate goals along the path to the final goal.

The crossover in my mind is not a single point but a range. I will discuss that in a separate post.

What happens when the dollar shrinks ..

Especially when $1 = Indian Rs. 1

Over the past few months the dollar has been declining against the Euro. This spurred me to think of some discussions I had with friends a few years ago.

The talk was centered around immigration into the US and what makes an individual leave her or his country to go for better prospects in a developed country like USA.

There are various reasons why people move : better job prospects, lesser political tension, better infrastructure support and last but not the least is money driven by growing economy.

In his book "The World is Flat" Friedman talks about how jobs have moved from one country to another largely due to the growth and advancement in technology which link the developed and developing nations.

Today jobs are shifted overseas for getting the same done cheaply. What does one spot at the end of the tunnel?

Today the value of $1 is approximately Rupees 40 in Indian currency. Will a perfect flat world be considered when $1 = Rs 1 or 1 yuan or 1 pesos?

Rather than going into how this could happen lets consider if this does happen what kind of effect will it have. I surveyed a few Indian friends I have and most of them said that Indians would return back to their country since the whole purpose of them coming here was to make money and if thats no longer true then there is no incentive to stay.

That was an immediate reaction. If one thinks more about the same thing. If $1 would become Rs. 1 then will American businessmen see any point to outsource? Will that mean all centers or outsourced jobs would come back to the US?
What would that mean for the Indian economy? Will it fear to lose all these jobs or think of outsourcing them somewhere?

There are some that move to other countries to attain more freedom and just to run away from their home land if the lifestyle back home is not to their liking.

I also spoke to some of my Latin friends , one from Venezuela thought that the baby boomer generation might move back faster if that happens.

The general feeling I got was life after retirement is easier in one's home country.

These are my general thoughts thinking about the same. I will jot down more. I welcome a discussion here :)

The World is Flat or Spiky - free trade analysis

Further on the analysis of "The World is Flat " By Friedman.

On the aspect of "free trade" Friedman explains how outsourcing or globalization might be good for all countries. He sites an example of "free trade" between US and China , these two being the only countries of the world. This will create additional resources in the market. If US had 100 people and China had 1000 people then the total number will be 1100 peoplewhich was described as win-win situation for both countries.
If this does happen then certain low level jobs in the US will go to China and these people will need to bump themselves up in the vertical markets which means higher education.

As globalization of flattening continues the population in the developed countries will need to prove themselves by competing with someone thousand miles away. Education will be an important criteria and we might see an increase in the number of applications for colleges.

At the same time the people in these developed countries will now be made to think to ensure they serve the higher 1100 vs. 100 people market. That is a stimulant or an incentive for business ideas.
I still think low skilled people will need to worry if education or intelligence is not their piece of cake and surviving in the flat world might require them to move to other low level skilled jobs which cannot move to China.

This movement of jobs creates a stiff competition in the developed countries. Pay rises increase in software tech industry in India is cited as an example in the book. Will it ever grow to the level equivalent to the US? If that becomes a reality will outsourcing really stop?

At this point the question that comes to our mind is outsourcing done to save money or improve quality or both?

The World is Flat can be interpreted in a few different ways. What is the true example of the ideal flat World? Is it that each person is self sufficient in their own country? Does that mean that less people will now migrate to US from Asia or Latin America since now there is a state of equilibrium established? Yes, there could be temporary assignments if this "free trade" continues.
For that to happen the first thing is that money across the world also becomes flat. Will that world be called "Money is Flat" and we just trade in one currency?

Will it happen that capitalistic minds in one country fierce in competition in the other ?

In this article on "The World is Spiky" found at http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic30774.files/2-2_Florida.pdf the author talks about the spikes in geographical concentrations of economic activities and notices the spikes at many. He also notes that innovation is concentrated in just a few countries in the world and argues that the World is Spiky. An example cited in the article is that people in urban areas of China makes 3 times more money than the same in the rural areas.

The above example cites a different angle of view for the same or similar idea of the flattening world.