Foundations of Finance

A study was recently conducted analyzing the correlation between education and leisure time. What they found was very interesting.

They found that those with more education tend to have less leisure time than those with less education.

I found this so interesting because it goes against everything we have thought about the American Dream since we first learned about it in grade school. The American Dream has always been to work hard, make a lot of money, and then have tons of leisure time. Well what they are discovering is that those with more money tend to make less leisure time for themselves than those with less money,

An important thing to remember is that those with less education have a higher unemployment rate that those with more education so this is a factor beyond their control. Despite this, what concerned me most was that those with less education and more leisure time spend less quality time with their children and less time exercising.

These are two things that are important for progression and to emphasize family values so I just hope that this is a not a growing trend. I am super idealistic but I want all Americans to progress and have personal goals.

    Its seems as though the “Macintosh vs pc” topic has been an ongoing battle for decades. Many claim that PC’s are the cheaper buy. My family has always owned PC’s. Even the alienware customs and another custom ordered PC’s. No arguement, They have cheaper prices! Economical? maybe…. I’ve wasted so many hours rendering, updating, troubleshooting, installing the “redo-disks”..I’m quite the expert in fixing the recurring issues I’ve battled with using my pc’s. Last year I converted to mac. Outside of my own opinion, I’ve done a little research, I hope you enjoy what few facts have helped me see just how much of a gap there is between Mac versus Pc.

         When NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston switched from Mac to Windows, troubleshooting calls grew consistently from 68,000 calls to 142,000 in just 2 years. Thats almost double the trouble with PC’s.

       There has been over 20,000 pc viruses detected on the internet daily. PC viruses are targeted at software and hardware components of your computer. Pc viruses can reach the flash BIOS and render the computer’s hardware totally inoperable. There has been a total of 40 detected viruses for mac on the internet. Of these, there has not been a mac virus created yet that has been able to reach any hardware devices. If you have a PC make sure you buy extra firewall protection and ant-virus programs such as Macafee. (This also includes a fun extra 10-15 seconds of load time for your anti-virus program when your PC is to turning on!)

          The average Wintel home user spends 50-60 hours a year troubleshooting their computer. The average mac user spends less than 5 hours per year. PC support costs are 4 times more than Mac support.

          Not only that, Listen to this…. The industry standard for Windows systems is 1 computer technician for every 25 to 60 computers. By contrast, the standard for Macintosh support is one person for every 100 to 200 machines. In fact, Gulfstream (a jet manufacturer) has 1 mac support technician for all 450 of their macs! Even Windows magazine Editor-in-Chief Mike Elgan’s agree’s and said, “Windows has become a bloated, unwieldy product only experts can use without confusion, crashes and endless compatibility problems.”

         Used pc’s do not maintain warantee with change of owner. Mac’s have a full coverage that allows owners to sell their computers with coverage. The owner of the used mac continues to recieve the full coverage Macintosh provides!

         For the average joe working at his business, a single windows server service call to Microsoft costs $195. A year of Apple support only costs $70.

         Macintosh has had the best performing computer stock since 1998.  Be confident the service, quality and level of maitained value will reflected in your mac. The imac has been the best-selling computer-line in CompUSA’s 13-year history.

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The unemployment rate is high and the economy is looking pretty ugly. As all of this is taking place inflation is sitting and waiting to emerge. Now is the time to prepare for this evil giant to enter. The best way to do this is by converting your liquid cash into sound investments. I want to share with you what I have learned through research on the best available investments.

Contrary to what many think, real estate is not necessarily a market you want to jump into right now. Consider this, thanks to low home prices the fed has dramatically lowered the national interest rate. The problem is potential investors need to consider inflation into this puzzle. As inflation happens the last thing to rise tends to be salaries. This will make paying off that mortgage really difficult.

With inflation it is a good idea to invest in goods and services that are rise with the inflation rate. One item that always seems to do this is gold. Thanks to this trend it a good industry to put your money in.

Another good investing opportunity for any investor living in this economy resides in commodities. A commodity is a product which people will always need regardless of the economy so their prices always increase.

Study your investment opportunities because realistically all that matters is your liquid money being converted to investments.