Archive for October, 2011

Welcome To the Retired Old Geezers’ Club

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October 31st, 2011

We are here to protect you from yourself

It’s open season on retirees like me: We are fair game to the predators. The hunters are out there, watching you, checking on you waiting for you. The instant that you slow down or lose concentration they will pounce in and strip you of every cent you have.

Look at my story

I worked my entire working life. I opened a pension saving account way back near the start of my career. I paid into it faithfully every month, moaning about the high premiums. Eventually I retired with a smile knowing that I had a nice plan going. But now that I’m there, it’s not what they told me. Sure, the money is there, I’m here but things have changed. Dramatically.

What changed

Everything has changed. Prices have soared beyond belief. Things we used to buy without thinking in my salary days are now totally beyond our means. We used to eat out at restaurants. These days if we decide to eat out at all, it’s a choice between different burger places. Gas has become a problem. A service on the car leads to a major debate between my wife and I. For that we have to miss out something else. We have money. In the days when I socked it away with a holiday in mind, a hotel room ran to $100 a night. Today we’re looking at $250. Clothes? We hardly buy anything new these days. The supermarket? We do minimum shopping. Now comes the bad news…

Investing

In all my planning over all the years, I counted on being able to invest my nest-egg money and earning interest on it. In the early years it was at least 10%, then it dropped to 8%. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought about 0 or 1%. Is this what I was saving for?

Offers to retirees

I saw this small ad in the paper the other day: “We promise you at least 8% on your money.” So I called and I got a very professional voice who started by saying: “Sir, I need to know what amount we are talking about. Can you please indicate if it is less than $20,000 or over $100,000?”

“It’s well over a hundred,” I say. The guy got very excited and said, “Sir, with an amount like that I believe we can promise you a return of well over ten percent on your investment.”

No such thing

I got quite excited at the thought that I could be earning a monthly amount of say $2,000 in interest on my investment. That would me back in restaurants and a couple of nice sweaters for the coming winter. I could even afford a set of new tires for the car. “How do you invest the money?” I asked. “Oh…, er…, um…, it’s a, you, know…”

I hung up at that point.

Retirement Wreckers

I was breathing heavily at this point. I nearly fell for it. Retirement scams could leave you in the poor house. These days, retirement scams range from the out and out fraud, where scammers intentionally separate seniors from their capital, to the more benign cases such as employers misusing or squandering the assets in a 401(k) plan.

Tags: Pensions, Retirement, Savings funds, Scams
Posted in Business, Economy, Employment, Money, Personal / Internet, Retirement | No Comments »

Remember The Movie, Slumdog Millionaire?

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October 29th, 2011

Why don’t you go play the game like this guy?

Here’s a great story! Every one of us wished this was me! A poor government clerk from a desolate region of eastern India has become the first person ever to win $1 million on an Indian game show. Sushil Kumar’s staggering win on the popular Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" has transformed him into a role model for millions of aspiring youth yearning to escape their lives of poverty and find a role in India’s burgeoning economy. His win echoes the plot of the 2008 Oscar-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire," whose impoverished protagonist won the grand prize on the show.

They wept

Kumar and his wife of four months wept when Indian movie legend Amitabh Bachchan, the show’s host, handed them a check for 50 million rupees, just over $1 million, after the contestant gave all the right answers. "You have created history!” Bachchan said.

To be aired next week

Before Kumar went on the program, which was taped Tuesday and will air next week, he earned $120 a month as a government office worker and supplemented his income by working as a private tutor in the small town of Motihari in the eastern state of Bihar. Kumar, the 26-year-old son of a farm laborer, told viewers his family was so poor they couldn’t afford a television set, forcing him to go to a neighbor’s home to watch the quiz show. Watching him tick off correct answer after correct answer, his neighbors persuaded him to try out for the show, he said.

Mumbai

The trip to the Mumbai studio where the show is taped was his first ride in a plane and his first visit to a big city. Before arriving on the set, Kumar was confident of winning $50,000 or $100,000, but the jackpot seemed like a distant dream. Just before the 13th question, he considered walking away with the $200,000 he had in hand but decided to take advantage of the option to peek at the final question. “When I looked at the question, I didn’t think I knew the answer but I knew that two of the four options were definitely not correct," Kumar said.

Options

Kumar still had one of four lifelines granted on the show, the convenient double dip option that allows a contestant to offer two possible answers to a question. The show’s organizers declined to reveal the final question before it is aired next week, saying only that it dealt with history.

The money

Kumar has clear, if modest, plans for the money. He said he will use some to pay for a preparatory course so he can take India’s tough civil service exam, which could lead to a secure and prestigious lifetime job. He said he will also buy a new home for his wife, pay off his parents’ debts and give his four brothers startup cash so they can set up small businesses.

Library

He also plans to build a library in Motihari so the children of his village will have access to the books and knowledge he so desperately craved, he said.

Tags: India, millionaire, Slumdog, TV Quiz shows
Posted in Business, Economy, Employment, Money, Personal / Internet | No Comments »

Go Viral – Make Some Money

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October 27th, 2011

This one is easy: just make a great U-tube video that everyone will want to see

Read this and you will see how easy it is to make money. We writers and researchers, who live in the Internet, day in and day out, know that there must be an easy way somewhere.

A birthday present

Katie Clem posted a video on YouTube this month of her daughter Lily’s poignant and funny reaction to her sixth birthday present, a trip to Disney-land, for her friends and family. Then it went viral. In three weeks, it has been watched about five million times, and Lily has become a minor Internet celebrity. Of far more importance, at least to Lily’s parents, the video is poised to make enough money from advertisements to send Lily to college. Got that? We are talking about serious money!

Create a video

Creating a video that attracts millions of viewers and becomes a pop culture phenomenon involves an unpredictable cocktail of luck and timing. A dash of cute babies or people acting like idiots can only help. But once a video goes viral, making some cold cash depends on quick action.

Here’s how

Here is some advice on how to take advantage of your 15 minutes of Internet fame from people who did just that. There is no single recipe for creating a viral video, but the videos that become sensations share a few common traits. Take the time to identify the video by writing a detailed title and description so people and search engines can find it easily, said Kevin Allocca, manager of YouTube Trends. Share it widely on social networks and let people embed the video on other Web sites.

Funny

It seems to help if the videos include funny people, especially old people and babies, animals and dancing, especially when the dancers are babies. Make a video that is universal yet original to you, recommends Randy McEntee, who posted an iPhone video, "Talking Twin Babies," showing his twin baby boys having an animated conversation in gibberish.

U-Tube ads

If your video is on the road to viral success, YouTube, a part of Google, is eager to make money from you. It will send you an e-mail asking if you want to become a partner. If you give your permission, the site will run ads alongside your video and share more than half the revenue with you, sending you a check each month. Some of the people behind viral videos, like the father of the boy coming down from dental anesthesia in "David After Dentist," have made more than $100,000 from YouTube ads. Mrs. Clem has made $3,000 in three weeks and stands to make much more because Disney wants to use her video in a TV ad.

Influential sites

The most important element is whether influential sites post the video. When the site Reddit posted Mr. McEntee’s video, for instance, its views jumped from 1,000 to six million in three days.

Go do it now!

Tags: Going viral, internet ads, Making money, U-tube, Videos
Posted in Business, Economy, Employment, Finance, Money, Personal / Internet, Technology | No Comments »

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