- RT @MoneyMatters: Frugal teen buys house with 4-H winnings http://bit.ly/amVvkV #
- RT @MoneyNing: What You Need to Know About CSAs Before Joining: Getting the freshest produce available … http://bit.ly/dezbxu #
- RT @freefrombroke: Latest Money Hackers Carnival! http://bit.ly/davj5w #
- Geez. Kid just screamed like she'd been burned. She saw a woodtick. #
- "I can't sit on the couch. Ticks will come!" #
- RT @chrisguillebeau: U.S. Constitution: 4,543 words. Facebook's privacy policy: 5,830: http://nyti.ms/aphEW9 #
- RT @punchdebt: Why is it “okay” to be broke, but taboo to be rich? http://bit.ly/csJJaR #
- RT @ericabiz: New on erica.biz: How to Reach Executives at Large Corporations: Skip crappy "tech support"…read this: http://www.erica.biz/ #
Saturday Roundup
- Image via Wikipedia
This weekend, my wife is spending three days scrapbooking, which makes it a great time to visit my parents and let my niece and nephew entertain my girls for me.
Best Posts
Following your passion doesn’t always pay the bills. Sometimes, there is a tangent that can cover the mortgage while still allowing you to do what you love.
Not everyone enjoys it, but cooking isn’t hard. It’s not even a talent, but a skill that can be learned. Winging it, or creating your own dishes is a talent.
Did you know the spork’s predecessor was invented thousands of years ago?
Here’s a site to help you avoid conflicts with local customs when you travel.
Potluck game night. I think we need to make this happen at our house.
Carnivals I’ve Rocked
6 Ways to Stretch a Meal was an Editor’s Pick in this week’s Festival of Frugality. GenX Finance rocks.
Cheap Drugs – How I Saved $25 in 3 Minutes was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Questions From a Reader was in the Carnival of Money Stories.
Thank you!
If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know.
Anchor Price Your Salary
- Image by Dalboz17 via Flickr
Conventional wisdom says that, when negotiating your salary or a raise, you should make whatever crazy ninja maneuvers it takes to get the other person to name a number first.
Horse pellets.
Have you ever watched an infomercial? Those masters of of impulse marketing geared towards insomniacs, invalids, and inebriates?
“How much would you pay for this fabulous meat tenderizer/eyelash waxer? $399? $299? No! If you call within the next 73 seconds, we will let you take this home for the low, low price of just $99.99!”
That’s the magic of anchor pricing.
The first number you hear is the number you will base all further numbers on. If you hear a high number, other lower numbers will feel much lower by comparison. The number doesn’t even have to be about money.
There was a study done that had the subjects compare a price to the last two digits of their social security numbers. Those with higher digits found higher prices to be acceptable, while those with lower prices only accepted cheaper prices.
What does an infomercial marketing ploy have to do with your salary?
If you are negotiating your salary and your potential employer gives a lowball offer, every higher counteroffer after that will much, much higher than than it would otherwise. On the other hand, if you start with your “perfect” salary, they amount you will be happy to settle for won’t seem to be nearly as high to the employer. At the same time, you will be less likely to accept a lowball offer if you set your anchor price high.
For example, if you are looking to make $50,000:
The employer offers you $40,000. $60,000 seems too high by comparison, so you counter with $50,000, then compromise and settler for $45,000. Or, you could start at $60,000, making the employer feel that $40,000 is too low, so he counters with $45,000, leaving a compromise at $52,000. That’s a hypothetical $7,000 boost, just for bucking conventional wisdom and taking a cue from the marketing industry.
How have you negotiated your salary?
What do you do?
You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your ******* khakis. -Tyler Durden
“What do you do?”
They typical answer is usually something like “I’m a computer programmer.” Or a DJ, a cop, a barista, a stripper, or whatever.
The answer is always given in the context of work. Is work the center of your life? Is your career the most important thing you have? For many, it is. Our jobs become a fully integrated piece of our identities. Even when we pay lip-service to putting our families first, all too often, we spend more of our waking hours working than actually living.
We spend 40, 50, 60 hours each week at our jobs. It’s natural for that to become a part of us.
We go too far.
I am not my job. I am not my career.
I am a father, a husband, a writer, a blogger, and more. I have hopes, dreams, and ambitions entirely apart from my career.
I hope you do, too.
The next time someone asks you what you do, try responding with your passion.
“I’m a parent.”
“I grow freaking awesome roses.”
“I travel whenever I can.”
“I obsess over politics.”
Leave the tradition work-centric script behind. You’re going to confuse the people who are expecting it. They think they are asking about your job and you are responding with something that truly matters to you.
What do you do?
The Obligatory Thanksgiving Post
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Tomorrow is also Thursday, and I don’t post on Thursdays, so I’ll be posting about Thanksgiving today.
Thanksgiving is a day to be thankful for–first and foremost–capitalism.
When the Pilgrims first landed, they set up a communal farming arrangement, figuring that a good Christian community could take care of its own. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, and all that. Everyone worked for the good of everyone else, so everyone benefited, right?
The Pilgrims, like every other group that has ever advocated communism, neglected to consider human nature. If you have no incentive to work, you don’t. If sleeping in and making babies still gets you fed and clothed, why work?
On the other side, if you work hard, only to see your hard work go to benefit your lazy neighbor, sleeping in and rattling the headboard, but never doing anything productive, why bother?
It didn’t take long for the Pilgrims to notice this tragedy of government wasn’t working.
The strong, or man of parts, had no more in devission of victails and cloaths, then he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter the other could; this was thought injuestice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalised in labours, and victails, cloaths, etc., with the meaner and yonger sorte, thought it some indignite and disrespect unto them. And for mens wives to be commanded to doe servise for other men, as dresing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemd it a kind of slaverie, neither could many husbands well brooke it. Upon the poynte all being to have alike, and all to doe alike, they thought them selves in the like condition, and ove as good as another; and so, if it did not cut of those relations that God hath set amongest men, yet it did at least much diminish and take of the mutuall respects that should be preserved amongst them.
It didn’t take long before nobody was working. Neighbors resented each other, because everyone had a right to the work of the other, with no need to compensate each other. That’s a case of “I’m starving because you aren’t working hard enough, but it’s not my fault you’re starving.”
At one point, the production of the colony was down so much that the colonists’ ration of corn was just 4 kernels per day. That’s how you kill a colony.
But they learned from their mistakes before they all died.
Yet notwithstanding all those reasons, which were not mine, but other mens wiser then my selfe, without answer to any one of them, here cometh over many quirimonies, and complaints against me, of lording it over my brethern, and making conditions fitter for theeves and bondslaves then honest men, and that of my owne head I did what I list. And at last a paper of reasons, framed against that clause in the conditions, which as they were delivered me open, so my answer is open to you all. And first, as they are no other but inconvenientes, such as a man might frame 20. as great on the other side, and yet prove nor disprove nothing by them, so they misse and mistake both the very ground of the article and nature of the project. For, first, it is said, that if ther had been no divission of houses and Lands, it had been better for the poore. True, and that showeth the inequalitie of the condition; we should more respecte him that ventureth both his money and his person, then him that ventureth but his person only.
The slavery of working for the benefit of others didn’t work, unless you were “theeves and bondslaves”. Then, it was great, living off of the sweat of others.
To make a long story short, the starvation ended when the Pilgrims were given parcels of land and told they could keep what they built from it. They went from the edge of extinction to being prosperous in a short time. The old and weak were cared for, not by the governor’s decree, but by the generosity of their neighbors.
Everybody in the colony won.
$1,000,000 Business Idea
I’m sick of working my day job.
I’m sick of working my side hustles.
I’m sick of working.
To make up for all of that, I’m going to launch a new business. My business model is guaranteed to generate $1,000,000 in revenue the first month.
Seriously.
It’s going to be a father/son enterprise, and to prove that the business model scales, I’m going to help him generate another $1,000,000 in revenue the first month.
This plan is infinitely replicable and infinitely scalable. Steal my business plan and you can have a million dollar business, too.
Ready?
First, my son is going to sell his XBox for $100. Yes, he’s taking a loss, but that’s the cost of getting into the business. Oh, and he’s selling it to me.
$100 for him.
Second, I’m going to sell it back to him for $100.
$100 for me.
He sells it to me for $100.
$200 for him.
I sell it to him for $100.
$200 for me.
If we do this just 9,998 more times, we’ll have generated $1,000,000 in revenue. At 1 minute per transaction, I figure we can both be running million dollar business after just 2 weeks of full-time work.
That’s a two-week vacation every single month.
Phenomenal plan.
Some of the haters are going to explode with comments about “profit” and “expenses”, but I don’t care. Cash flow is king. They can sit at home and whine about their $50,000 jobs while I’m making millions. Sure, my profit (the money leftover after expenses are taken from the revenue) is on the low side, but I can make that up in volume.
Millions.
If I do this every month, I’ll be sitting on a $12,000,000 business. I bet I can sell that for 5 times my annual profits.
Any buyers out there?
Any entrepreneurs ready to copy my business model?
Anybody have a better grasp of the difference between cash flow and profit than I do?
