People may carpool for different reasons, but financial considerations—fuel costs—are often a driving force. Josh Smith, 25, of Findlay, Ohio, regularly carpools about 20 miles to his job at Bluffton University. He’s the school’s advancement services manager, and in his spare time he is a blogger for www.walletpop.com. He began carpooling about the time gas first broached the $3 mark, after a casual conversation with a colleague at the school who happened to live in the same town. “Knowing that someone else who worked basically the same schedule lived really close by, we decided to cut our gas budgets in half,” he said.

Check out the rest of the article, Shifting Gears on Carpooling as Gas Prices Rise as part of the Forecast Earth section of Weather.com.

You should head over and check out Josh Smith’s latest postings at WalletPop and then hit the front page to see what the whole site is about. As one of my friend’s put it, “It was surprisingly REALLY good…..more helpful than I thought it’d be!”.  Thanks for that vote of confidence Liz, I think there is a  complement hidden in there somewhere.

I’ll still be blogging here with loads of game, tech and mobile computing items but anything relating to consumer issues or personal finance will be posted on WalletPop.

Tracy Coenen at Walletpop had a wonderful roundup of service items to have performed on your vehicle which will save you money in the long run.  The list of servicing items includes some obvious ones such as changing your oil regularly as well as some maintenance items which are less obvious including checking your brakes.

One more thing to check regularly is your air filter.  This is something your mechanic can do in conjunction with your oil change.  On most vehicles this is something you can easily do yourself depending on the location of the filter.
Performing these often low cost services to your car or truck will help the long term value of the and reduce the frequency of breakdowns.

One great place to go to get advice and great priced parts is Autozone.  My local store is staffed by extremely knowledgeable staff who are always willing to help me poke around under the hood and offer suggestions to simple fixes.  I was quite impressed when I had a check engine light diagnosed by them and despite the ease with which they could have sold a potential solution they simply reset the light and advised I have a mechanic dig in further or return next time the light came on to purchase the needed parts.  This situation and the knowledge the staff holds makes Autozone my favorite stop for auto needs.

Flickr: Martin Eian

Following on the heals of yesterdays $50 Mastercard I found out about a debit card which is just as much a stinker. Reserve Solutions Inc. rolled out a new debit card solution a few years ago which it has just begun marketing recently. Normally debit cards aren’t so bad, you are using money you already have and so long as you can avoid ATM fees the overall cost is low. Reserve Solutions debit card dubbed the ReservePlus debit card lets you borrow against your current 401k. Let that sink in, you are going to borrow against your retirement to handle your day to day expenses. This is such a horrendous idea I am struggling to find a appropriate metaphor.

Nevermind that you are dipping into the money that is supposed to carry you from employment to the grave, the penalties on these withdrawals has to negate the amount the temporary benefit of using this money. The card allows for plan participants to withdraw from their retirement plan and pay interest on that money. This arrangement sounds oddly like a secured credit card.

As a young person it bothers me that the company is targeting other young employees as the main users of this product.

Young contributors are more likely to open accounts, knowing they can access the money in an emergency

Retirement funds shouldn’t be seen as this magic stash of cash you can tap at age 25, this money should be invested in order to support you and yours later in life.  Please don’t treat your 401k as a “emergency fund”, your better off building up a reserve in a high yield online savings account.  Even an emergency fund of $1000 is a good start and can be a lifesaver down the road.

Digging a little deeper it appears that Reserve Solutions has provided turnkey mortgage solution, as well as other IRA and 401* packages for companies.

Its 2008  right now but you just woke up and realized you donated $10 online instead of the $1,000 you wanted to give away in order to maximize your tax benefit.  Damn those fuzzy navels!  You can still fix this, first take a Tylenol and drink some water.  Now rummage through your purse or briefcase and pull out your checkbook.  Its that rectangle looking sheaf with many papers inside.  Write out your check and date it 12/31/07.  If you drop this in the mail on Wednesday morning you can still count your donation as calender year 2007 at most charities.

Most charities will leave the “book” open for a week or so as those straggling 07 checks come in.  The charity I work for and many others will process these checks dated 12/31/07 and received in the new year as an 2007 check including issuing a tax receipt for 2007.  This sort of processing doesn’t last long so drop that check in the mail today!

Photo – mrbill

It is always interesting to hear advice from those who have “made it” in the world if only to pick up a nugget of practical information that you can piece together to form your own success. Amanda from Young and Broke had the opportunity to hear George Lucas speak at an Economic Club of Chicago Dinner Meeting recently and enjoyed a presentation as well as gained some insight into Lucas’ drive and how he left the path carved out before him to create a great business.

Well, according to Lucas, by simply following his passion. His father wanted him to go into the family business, but he knew it wasn’t for him. He enrolled at USC in the school of cinematography, and never looked back. At multiple points in his career he has put up his own money to finance his projects, despite the huge risk that posed and potential to bankrupt him. Why? Because it was never about the money for him. He felt he had to do these certain things – had to pursue them because he was so passionate about the work. Obviously, the risk paid off.

What I take away from this is that sometimes you need to be the one to take the risk and invest in yourself. Being successful doesn’t come from always asking others to believe in you and invest in your ideas and plans, it takes initiative and drive.

Career Wisdom from George Lucas – Young and Broke 

It’s a fact of life for many students at Bowling Green State University and other schools. They’re in debt.

Last year alone, BGSU students borrowed $129 million to attend school. Their debt worries don’t end here. Many are piling up bills they can’t pay on credit cards.

The solution: mandatory personal finance classes in high school. That’s going to happen in 2010, the result of a bill sponsored by Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray.

While I am sure some people will argue that the students may not take the classes seriously or pay enough attention to the material, if the classes help even a few students the time and money will be well worth it.

Cordray could kick the classes up a notch by adopting a “Scared Straight” approach, bringing in recent college grads from that specific school system to stress the need for learning about personal finance and the importance of owning your personal finance.  Someone buy Richard a drink for sponsoring this bill.

WTOL 11- Ohio high schools to include personal finance courses

Just over a year ago I wrote about our experience with DSS Inc. a subsidiary of All Star Promotions and the shady magazine sales they run.

Boy am I a sucker sometimes. Anyway I looked into the company DSS Inc, which is owned/operated by All-star Promotions based out of Texas. Well All-Star has had 49 BBB complaints in the last 36 months so I have issued a stop order to my check and I am sending the cancellation in tomorrow via Fax. Apparently if you do not cancel your order within 3 days before midnight in writing All Star et al will pursue you with a debt collection agency.

The article has been getting numerous comments lately and it is good to remind people that these door to door sales for magazines are often under shady circumstances. These prices are often way over even retail price. If you want to save money look for the digital version or a blog covering a similar topic. If you enjoy magazines as much as I do then try to subscribe through a more beneficial source.

Good sources for magazine deals:

• Slickdeals free magazine forum
  
• Blogs with similar topics – look for giveaways used as a source of promotion for the blog
• The Magazine’s website – often they have online specials
• School fundraisers – Real ones, from people you know. (Ask your Boss or Co-Worker, one is bound to have a kid selling subscriptions)

If you are new to the world of free magazine subscriptions you are likely asking how or why they give away the magazine which others pay so much for. The reasoning is quite simple, money. Magazines make their big bucks through advertisers and the advertisers pay more for ads which are seen by more individuals. Hence giving away subscriptions translates into more money for the publisher.

Remember, don’t by subscription from door to door sales unless you have money to throw away.

I found fakechecks.org through a commercial during primetimeTV a few weeks ago, it is embedded below.

I think this campaign is very worthwhile endeavor.  I wish the various banks and creditors behind this would get together and work to educate consumers about credit in general.  I think everyone could use more information about the risks of credit and clearer rules and fee structures wouldn’t hurt either.

Defining a Market Driven Company:
Describing Characteristics of Market Driven Companies for Your Superiors

Colgate has declared, “Our mission is to find needs and fill them, not make products and sell them” (Day, 1999, p. 8 ). These words and similar slogans are often used by companies to emphasize and reassure the customers and employees that the company is market driven and customer centric. Unfortunately these slogans are just words and being a “Market Driven” company means and takes much more than regurgitating the CEO’s PR gem of the month. In order for a company to be market driven it is important for the whole company to be on board and actively seeking to remain market driven. The culture of a market driven company is an ongoing effort on several fronts including relationships, exchanges, internal knowledge and competitors.

George Day describes a market driven company as one with, “a superior ability to understand, attract and keep valuable customers.” (Day, 1999, p. 5). Day adds to this definition of market driven companies by qualifying that these companies have, “a willingness to keep reorienting themselves as markets change.” (p. 25). These definitions provide the base which is built on by a company having an externally oriented culture, distinctive capabilities and configuration which allows the company to adapt (p. 7). The key to this setup is that a market driven company cannot pick and choose these elements. It is necessary to have all of them due to the multiplicative nature of being market driven. By taking away one part of the market driven definition and elements a company is not simply less market driven, it is not market driven. Once these pieces of the company have been put into place a company cannot rest on its laurels and expect to succeed for the long term. Part of being a market driven company is realizing that configuration is an ongoing concern requiring monitoring and changes to continue to, “deliver superior customer value” (p. 12). It is important for a company to be market oriented in order to remain competitive and profitable, for example one study found that, “market driven businesses were 31% more profitable” (p. 13). Companies who are market driven have the understanding that not all customers are profitable or worth pursuing, which removes some power from the customer in demanding the lowest prices (p. 34). Relationships, views of the customer and the use of knowledge within the company all play a part in this profitability.

Due to the multiplicative nature of the market driven style it is important that the entire organization including the CEO and front line individuals are bought in to the need, “to identify and seize market opportunities as they arise.” (Day, 1999, p. 82). Intuit the makers of Quicken utilized this piece of being market driven well and gather information about the use of their product from many sources including frontline staff and non customers. This has allowed them to react and offer a product which met the customer’s needs. These observations and changes did not magically happen; a key part of being market driven is keeping and sharing the internal knowledge in the company. This knowledge is gathered from interactions with suppliers, customers, competitors, vendors, technical support, and front line personnel to name a few sources. Market driven companies excel at sharing and augmenting knowledge through the use of a shared knowledgebase. The knowledge base contains information such as past results for example, which seeds perform well in a certain climate/soil combinations, allowing the company to make logical recommendations to current and future customers (p. 131). The knowledge base should also be a repository of the firm’s successes and failures in many areas ranging from product support to relationship building. The shared data allows the company to make educated decisions without wasting time and resources where projects have failed in the past. Market driven organizations must use the knowledgebase with an open mind, past failure cannot negate an option from ever being tried again, the data simply enables educated decisions by open minded leaders (p. 85). The knowledgebase provides a venue for employees to share information which may have normally been tossed aside for fear it would be put into a black hole with no affect on the company.

All of this information can be put to use to provide value adding services to the relationships the company has. For example the Milliken Company provides software and training to laundries in order to gain favor and a price premium (Day, 1999, p. 123). These relationships allow market driven companies to retain customers, allowing for higher average profit per customer (p. 125). This is a move away from the zero sum transaction mentality towards value adding and collaborative exchanges which provide a net benefit to both parties. Value adding and collaborative exchanges which focus on retaining customers and working closely with customers can provide a positive sum game in which both parties benefit, resulting in a much higher overall benefit than the transactional model (p. 137). These relationship methods can provide market driven companies with a competitive advantage in meeting needs and retaining customers.

These pieces fit together within market driven companies to enable success. If a company does not allow the culture to pervade the entire organization or fails to share knowledge then it is not market driven and is not likely to reap the benefits. In order to be defined as a market driven company the organization should; value its relationships with customers and focus on providing a positive sum game relation while sharing knowledge and working to understand the customer. These tasks will provide opportunities for market driven companies to increase profits and customer retention while sustaining long term benefits such as profit and excellent relationships with customers and suppliers.

Works Cited
Day, G. S. (1999). The Market Driven Organization. New York: The Free Press.

How does this resonate with your organization? Any readers have thoughts on being market driven?