Archive for October, 2006

Group drawing project: Chewing Pencils’ a Christmas Cartoon

Blogging

Matt Glover over at Chewing Pencils, a blog about making money from cartooning, has a underway that I just couldn’t resist participating in.

You see, I was the resident cartoonist for my bschool newspaper, where, not surprisingly, I drew comic strip panels related to geeky and fairly obscure bschool-related topics. It was an unpaid side role that I did just for fun, but it was always nice to see faculty and students enjoy my work.

Anyway, the project’s challenge is to draw a Christmas cartoon with the word “blog” in it, and if you’re at all interested, I encourage you to read over the rules and participate. Part of Matt’s challenge is also to sell your work, so I envisioned the cartoon as a Christmas card-format, though I have no expectations of actually pulling in any funds from this :)

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Take Metamucil to lower cholesterol (health tip of the month)

Tips for saving money

I realize most of my readers are here for investment-related tools rather than health tips, but I’ve got a helpful one that I thought worth sharing.

I went to my doctor last week for my regular checkup and found my cholesterol level had risen to 223. Just to give you some background, I’m 5’3″ and about 110 lbs, I do exercise regularly and I tend to eat home-cooked meals, so this isn’t a case of needing a major lifestyle change. Actually, I think it’s largely genetic in my case. I sound like some sort of perfect candidate for those cholesterol-lowering medications you see on TV, right? The truth is, I’m pretty averse to taking medication if I can help it, what with all the potential side effects, especially if there are all-natural alternatives.

What’s my solution? Well…it’s, uh, Metamucil. Two years ago, my cholesterol level was at 243, and the nurse practictioner who was working for my primary care physician told me to lay off the refined starches (pasta, potatoes, rice) to lower my triglycerides (which were also high), and to take Metamucil for the cholesterol, which many of her patients had discovered was very effective.

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APR to APY online calculator

Personal finance, T-bills

I just added a new calculator for converting APR into APY based on monthly, quarterly, and semiannual compounding. This should make it easier to find APYs given the investment rates (APRs) of each T-bill every week. (You can also read background information on the difference between APR and APY.) Feedback or comments welcomed.

T-bill rates update

T-bills

This week, I forked over more money to the guvment in the form of buying more 4-week and 3-month treasuries. The 4-week yield (APY) went up to 5.27% from 5.16%. The 3-month yield went up to 5.22% from 5.17%. Taking the California tax rate of 9.3% into account, T-bills are now effectively yielding right around 6%.

Note that the 4-week now pays more than the 3-month. Given the amount of money I’m putting in, the difference isn’t great enough to justify transferring my brokerage funds to a regular account in order to be able to use Treasury Direct, but I’ll have to keep an eye on this spread.

I’ve attached the updated chart below, showing current APRs on all three types of T-bills.

Again, if you’re interested in learning more about buying T-bills, which are especially worth considering if you live in a state with state income taxes, be sure to check out the exhaustive . There’s also plenty of information from Treasury Direct itself. Finally, the fine people over at the Fatwallet thread have created an rss feed for upcoming treasury auction dates and one for daily treasury yield curves that are worth subscribing to. Thanks guys!

An easy way to get into an entrepreneurial mindset

Business & entrepreneurship

A few weeks ago, I was talking (well, whining, might be more accurate) to a friend about how I’d love to start my own business someday but always came up short on ideas. He suggested I volunteer somewhere where I’d get to interact with small business owners and entrepreneurs.

It was the best advice I’d received in a long time. After contacting a couple of places — really, there’s no shortage here in the Bay Area — I actually ended up volunteering at a local non-profit incubator. Last week, I sat in for about 3 hours one evening on some of their one-on-one counseling sessions with students who were taking a business planning course. I found my mindset changing dramatically in so many ways:

  1. I really benefitted from interacting with people who are taking concrete steps toward starting their own business because I don’t really know anyone like that among my friends and family.
  2. I got to see what small business owners face, like the process of asking and resolving real small business needs. For example: product design (should I use a pattern or a simple black fabric?), how to test market a product with very little budget (how about giving your book club a few samples and have them test it out for a month and give you feedback?), how to name a product (ask everyone for their opinion, offer a small prize), how to price a product, how to lower costs on a product, how to develop a story about who your target market is, etc.
  3. I realized that many people who were trying to start their own business there were doing so out of necessity. They weren’t doing it to make big bucks.
  4. Being there reminded me that there’s no mystery to starting a business, no magic bullet or rare skill. More than anything else, it takes a lot of doing: the no-frills, put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other kind of doing, and lots of it, plus the kind of commitment and focus that goes along with it.

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