I like to start my day with warm oatmeal with brown sugar. It warms me up, fills me up, tastes good and is fairly nutritious.
As this is something I consume regularly I want to maximize the trade off between price and taste so that I am getting the best possible value. I tested the brand name oats (quaker oatmeal) and the store brand (safeway).
Shelf price:
Quaker Oats - $5.49 for 42 onces or 13 cents an once
Safeway - $3.99 for 42 onces or 9.5 cents an once.
Taste:
The taste of both were pretty similar, especialy after the brown sugar was added - which makes sense as oatmeal is basicly a commoddity product.
Consisteny:
Here is where things got a little interesting. The Safeway oats seemed to be smaller and have more oat dust/powder/residue vs the Quaker Oats and this seemed to give the Safeway oatmeal a more pasty texture. Adding more water seemed to take care of the issue, but it took some getting used to.
Conculsion:
The brand name and store brand are very close. I slightly prefer the Quaker Oats, but not $1.50 more. However, Safeway often runs buy one get one free specials on Quaker Oats making them cheaper then the Safeway brand so the best strategy for me is to look out for these specials and pounce when I see them. Even better would be if I could find a coupon to combine with the sale! I've also noticed that walgreens has occasional sales on oatmeal, so I'll have to keep an eye out to see how much they are charging.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Gen Y Marketing
There is a marketing survey of sorts making it's rounds on the internet how Gen Y is different than previous generations. Here is my take.
I do have cable, but only basic. This is augmented by dvd's from netflix and watching tv online. Considering there are only 4 or 5 shows worth watching, I don't think I'm missing much.
I don’t have a landline telephone. In fact, with the exception of work and calling my family on occasion, I don’t speak on the phone much at all.
I do text, a lot. If there were a plan offering unlimited text but pay extra to talk, instead of the current unlimited talk and pay extra to text phone plans, I would sign up immediately.
I do listened to the radio, but only for about 5 minutes in the morning. I do use pandora to listen to music at work though.
I don’t read a physical newspaper or magazines. Sadly, people give me magazine subscriptions and they just sit on the table unread. Even when I'm interested in the subject material, I have little desire to read the magazine.
I do read books though, and they are usually bought from Amazon.
I don’t ever text in for special offers/promotions, I'm worried it's a scam and I'll get charged or my number will get put on some list and I'll start getting text from them. I don't want either of those things.
I don’t try a new restaurant/salon/bar without reading the reviews on Yelp, and if the reviews aren't good I won't go.
I don’t play games on corporate/brand websites, really, why would someone do that? They make you register with all sorts of personal info and contact information so they can spam you forever and then after all that the games usually suck anyway. No thanks.
I don’t buy full albums of music, even on iTunes. Sometimes I get a CD as a gift but I really have no idea when the last time I bought an entire full length CD was - 10 years ago maybe?
I don’t carry much cash, usually less than $40. I put everything on my credit card. Why carry around a bulky wad of paper (linen more accurately) bills when a little plastic card is all you need?
I do multitask, maybe more than I should there is something to be said about focusing on one thing and doing it well.
I do get 99% of my information online. I love my google reader and get most of my daily news online. I love being able to go read the best content at each of the daily papers, though with most papers just reissuing AP news reports there are fewer and fewer quality writers anymore.
I don't like calling and waiting for customer support. Companies should have web chat based support or at least an automatic call back feature so you are called when a CSR is free instead of keeping you on hold. On the recent celebrity apprentice (a guilty sunday night pleasure) a Norton Antivirus exec complained that there was no phone number on the ad generated by the women's team: Note to Norton, we don't want to call you to order your product. You should have asked where your web page promo was. I'm assuming you can download Norton and the million updates that will come with it, so why not just send people to the web site?
I do find that companies/brands worth following in the social media space are few and far between. There are a lot of companies trying to get into this space and it's resulting in a lot of space being taken up without a lot of quality content. But:
I do believe that if you can engage, entertain, and/or teach me, I will value what you have to say, come back for more and buy your products. I look for value in anything that I do. If a company is providing me with a service that adds value to my life then I'm going to want more of it and be willing to pay for it.
What do you do or don't do and how does it compare to other generations?
I do have cable, but only basic. This is augmented by dvd's from netflix and watching tv online. Considering there are only 4 or 5 shows worth watching, I don't think I'm missing much.
I don’t have a landline telephone. In fact, with the exception of work and calling my family on occasion, I don’t speak on the phone much at all.
I do text, a lot. If there were a plan offering unlimited text but pay extra to talk, instead of the current unlimited talk and pay extra to text phone plans, I would sign up immediately.
I do listened to the radio, but only for about 5 minutes in the morning. I do use pandora to listen to music at work though.
I don’t read a physical newspaper or magazines. Sadly, people give me magazine subscriptions and they just sit on the table unread. Even when I'm interested in the subject material, I have little desire to read the magazine.
I do read books though, and they are usually bought from Amazon.
I don’t ever text in for special offers/promotions, I'm worried it's a scam and I'll get charged or my number will get put on some list and I'll start getting text from them. I don't want either of those things.
I don’t try a new restaurant/salon/bar without reading the reviews on Yelp, and if the reviews aren't good I won't go.
I don’t play games on corporate/brand websites, really, why would someone do that? They make you register with all sorts of personal info and contact information so they can spam you forever and then after all that the games usually suck anyway. No thanks.
I don’t buy full albums of music, even on iTunes. Sometimes I get a CD as a gift but I really have no idea when the last time I bought an entire full length CD was - 10 years ago maybe?
I don’t carry much cash, usually less than $40. I put everything on my credit card. Why carry around a bulky wad of paper (linen more accurately) bills when a little plastic card is all you need?
I do multitask, maybe more than I should there is something to be said about focusing on one thing and doing it well.
I do get 99% of my information online. I love my google reader and get most of my daily news online. I love being able to go read the best content at each of the daily papers, though with most papers just reissuing AP news reports there are fewer and fewer quality writers anymore.
I don't like calling and waiting for customer support. Companies should have web chat based support or at least an automatic call back feature so you are called when a CSR is free instead of keeping you on hold. On the recent celebrity apprentice (a guilty sunday night pleasure) a Norton Antivirus exec complained that there was no phone number on the ad generated by the women's team: Note to Norton, we don't want to call you to order your product. You should have asked where your web page promo was. I'm assuming you can download Norton and the million updates that will come with it, so why not just send people to the web site?
I do find that companies/brands worth following in the social media space are few and far between. There are a lot of companies trying to get into this space and it's resulting in a lot of space being taken up without a lot of quality content. But:
I do believe that if you can engage, entertain, and/or teach me, I will value what you have to say, come back for more and buy your products. I look for value in anything that I do. If a company is providing me with a service that adds value to my life then I'm going to want more of it and be willing to pay for it.
What do you do or don't do and how does it compare to other generations?
Friday, March 26, 2010
Profit Sharing
A day after getting our raise/bonus information, I found out what the company profit sharing is: 0.5%
Yes, half a percent.
After reading the email I stared at the screen for a minute of so in a state of shock and wonder. 0.5%? My thoughts ranged from What's the point?, to Thanks for nothing, to I guess I should be happy I at least got something.
And really, all three of those things sum up how I feel. I do feel glad that I got something when so many others don't get any profit sharing bonus but is half a percent the best they could do? After telling everyone how good of a year we had, how we topped our internal projections? I can't help but wonder if management isn't being completely honest with the employees.
Yes, half a percent.
After reading the email I stared at the screen for a minute of so in a state of shock and wonder. 0.5%? My thoughts ranged from What's the point?, to Thanks for nothing, to I guess I should be happy I at least got something.
And really, all three of those things sum up how I feel. I do feel glad that I got something when so many others don't get any profit sharing bonus but is half a percent the best they could do? After telling everyone how good of a year we had, how we topped our internal projections? I can't help but wonder if management isn't being completely honest with the employees.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Raises and Bonus
We finally got our raises and bonuses. Yay, I think.
I'm really conflicted as to how I feel about the results. On one hand I'm glad that I got any raise and bonus with all of the economic horror stories that are going around. On the other hand, the results weren't very inspiring.
The raise was for 2.7% but my bonus was cut 45%. When put in dollar terms the net result is that I'll get about $200 more this year than last year. Somehow I don't think I'm winning the battle against inflation this year.
This is after the company got done telling us how great the results last year were. Unfortunately it turns out that our bonus structure is dependent on the individual unit that you're in and apparently the unit I'm in is struggling.
With the market being up more than 50% since last year this doesn't make much sense to me, but there isn't much I can do about it. I'm not responsible for generating new business and I'm not even sure what metric is being looked at when bonuses are decided.
Normally I'd try to negotiate a better raise or bonus, but my boss tried to get me the full bonus but the decision to cut the bonus came from way up top. Meaning I'd have to go to my boss's boss to get anything changed and I don't think I have the leverage to do that.
To make matters even worse, my manager didn't seem optimistic that things would get much better next (this) year, or possibly even the year after that.
Which is really discouraging and makes me wonder if I should start thinking about checking out other companies.
In an ironic twist, we get to fill out our employee satisfaction survey soon. I think I know exactly what I'll be telling them.
I'm really conflicted as to how I feel about the results. On one hand I'm glad that I got any raise and bonus with all of the economic horror stories that are going around. On the other hand, the results weren't very inspiring.
The raise was for 2.7% but my bonus was cut 45%. When put in dollar terms the net result is that I'll get about $200 more this year than last year. Somehow I don't think I'm winning the battle against inflation this year.
This is after the company got done telling us how great the results last year were. Unfortunately it turns out that our bonus structure is dependent on the individual unit that you're in and apparently the unit I'm in is struggling.
With the market being up more than 50% since last year this doesn't make much sense to me, but there isn't much I can do about it. I'm not responsible for generating new business and I'm not even sure what metric is being looked at when bonuses are decided.
Normally I'd try to negotiate a better raise or bonus, but my boss tried to get me the full bonus but the decision to cut the bonus came from way up top. Meaning I'd have to go to my boss's boss to get anything changed and I don't think I have the leverage to do that.
To make matters even worse, my manager didn't seem optimistic that things would get much better next (this) year, or possibly even the year after that.
Which is really discouraging and makes me wonder if I should start thinking about checking out other companies.
In an ironic twist, we get to fill out our employee satisfaction survey soon. I think I know exactly what I'll be telling them.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Saving for Retirement
I was reading this cnnmoney article via yahoo finance about saving for retirement and was surprised and saddened by what I saw. The article didn't say, but since this is a retirement article I'm going to assume they mean saving in a 401k or IRA.
I wasn't so surprised to see that 43% have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, it seems like there are a lot of people that contribute only a little or maybe they contribute some and then take it out later. What really surprised me was that 27% had less than $1,000 saved. $1,000??? I save more than that every month! And it's not like I make more than $100k, I'm just good with my money - carefully spending and saving the rest. Actually I take the save first, then carefully spend then save again with whatever is left, which seems to work pretty well for me.
The article concludes by saying that people will have to work longer to make up for the shortfall in their savings. Which is fine by me. I have no problem with the choices that people make in how they spend their money so long as they don't expect me to help subsidize the difference between what they did save and what they should have saved by having to pay higher taxes.
Unfortunately this might be wishful thinking. Social Security, medicare and medicade all face huge funding issues and the only probable solution appears to be a combination of reduced benefits and higher taxes to bridge the gap. The net result is that the savers in the economy get punished. In the present the savers get punished through low interest rates and low rates of return on most investments and in the future the savers will get punished through higher taxes.
This is not good. It's actually very bad. Savings is one of the drivers of economic growth. Our government should be encouraging people to save, not be mindless consumers filling their over sized houses with ever more stuff. I only hope someone in Washington dusts off an econ book one of these years.
I wasn't so surprised to see that 43% have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, it seems like there are a lot of people that contribute only a little or maybe they contribute some and then take it out later. What really surprised me was that 27% had less than $1,000 saved. $1,000??? I save more than that every month! And it's not like I make more than $100k, I'm just good with my money - carefully spending and saving the rest. Actually I take the save first, then carefully spend then save again with whatever is left, which seems to work pretty well for me.
The article concludes by saying that people will have to work longer to make up for the shortfall in their savings. Which is fine by me. I have no problem with the choices that people make in how they spend their money so long as they don't expect me to help subsidize the difference between what they did save and what they should have saved by having to pay higher taxes.
Unfortunately this might be wishful thinking. Social Security, medicare and medicade all face huge funding issues and the only probable solution appears to be a combination of reduced benefits and higher taxes to bridge the gap. The net result is that the savers in the economy get punished. In the present the savers get punished through low interest rates and low rates of return on most investments and in the future the savers will get punished through higher taxes.
This is not good. It's actually very bad. Savings is one of the drivers of economic growth. Our government should be encouraging people to save, not be mindless consumers filling their over sized houses with ever more stuff. I only hope someone in Washington dusts off an econ book one of these years.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Goal Updates
Wow, has it really been 2 weeks since I last posted? Sorry about that. I had family in town and have been studying like crazy for the CFA exam. Combined with work being busy it looks like blogging got away from me. I'll make an effort to keep on top of it better going forward.
Max out Roth – On pace!
Maintain 16% in 401k – I'm still contributing 16%!
401K balance of $60k – Fail. current balance is $42,622, I've gone up from last month but only by my contributed amount. The account return was practically 0% and I'm going to need better then that if I want to get $60k by the end of the year.
Make an extra $500 – Ahead of pace. Did a focus group and got $250 for it. Score! It was a fun mock jury focus group about software copyright infringement.
Maintain $10K emergency Fund - On pace!
Sell something on ebay – Fail. Nothing sold so far.
Pay down student loan to $32,000, so in effect my goal is to pay another $1,370 in addition to the regular payments - Fail. I've made no additional payments so far and with a rate of only 1.625% have decided this isn't something that I really want to do anymore.
Personal:
Climb 5.11 – On pace! I'm making progress here. I tried and failed at a 5.11A, I just have to keep trying the climbs. I also think I need to build up some additional strength in my legs and also upper body to complete these harder climbs a bit easier.
Climb/Yoga 3x per week. This goal is temporarily reduced to 2x a week while I'm studying for the CFA exam over the next 3 months. On pace! I think I went climbing 7 times last month.
Consistently work out 3x per week – Fail. work has been busy and so I cut back to going twice a week. I'll have to work on this one.
Weigh 178 lbs – Fail! big time. I took a huge step back here with my weight dropping to 168.7 last weigh-in. This leaves me with 10 months to gain 10 pounds. Still doable but I'm going to have to hit the gym and eat more. I've come to the conclusion that I just don't eat as much as I think I do.
Take two vacations – Fail. With the CFA taking over my life, most things that are time intensive are on hold. I took a business trip to San Diego, but that doesn't count. I think a short vacation after the CFA is just what I need to help recover!
Look into moving – done. we looked into moving but didn't see anything better for the same or less money. It's just crazy how much rent is in the Bay Area. This is something we'll come back to in the summer and fall though - again, once I have free time after my exam.
Reviewing my list I'm starting to see more fails than goals I'm on pace for. Some of these I'll have to live with as I don't have nearly as much free time due to the CFA exam but there are other ares where I'll have to work harder at. In general though I'm fairly happy with where I am with two months down, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
Max out Roth – On pace!
Maintain 16% in 401k – I'm still contributing 16%!
401K balance of $60k – Fail. current balance is $42,622, I've gone up from last month but only by my contributed amount. The account return was practically 0% and I'm going to need better then that if I want to get $60k by the end of the year.
Make an extra $500 – Ahead of pace. Did a focus group and got $250 for it. Score! It was a fun mock jury focus group about software copyright infringement.
Maintain $10K emergency Fund - On pace!
Sell something on ebay – Fail. Nothing sold so far.
Pay down student loan to $32,000, so in effect my goal is to pay another $1,370 in addition to the regular payments - Fail. I've made no additional payments so far and with a rate of only 1.625% have decided this isn't something that I really want to do anymore.
Personal:
Climb 5.11 – On pace! I'm making progress here. I tried and failed at a 5.11A, I just have to keep trying the climbs. I also think I need to build up some additional strength in my legs and also upper body to complete these harder climbs a bit easier.
Climb/Yoga 3x per week. This goal is temporarily reduced to 2x a week while I'm studying for the CFA exam over the next 3 months. On pace! I think I went climbing 7 times last month.
Consistently work out 3x per week – Fail. work has been busy and so I cut back to going twice a week. I'll have to work on this one.
Weigh 178 lbs – Fail! big time. I took a huge step back here with my weight dropping to 168.7 last weigh-in. This leaves me with 10 months to gain 10 pounds. Still doable but I'm going to have to hit the gym and eat more. I've come to the conclusion that I just don't eat as much as I think I do.
Take two vacations – Fail. With the CFA taking over my life, most things that are time intensive are on hold. I took a business trip to San Diego, but that doesn't count. I think a short vacation after the CFA is just what I need to help recover!
Look into moving – done. we looked into moving but didn't see anything better for the same or less money. It's just crazy how much rent is in the Bay Area. This is something we'll come back to in the summer and fall though - again, once I have free time after my exam.
Reviewing my list I'm starting to see more fails than goals I'm on pace for. Some of these I'll have to live with as I don't have nearly as much free time due to the CFA exam but there are other ares where I'll have to work harder at. In general though I'm fairly happy with where I am with two months down, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
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