News & Opinion

Manilla – One Organized Place for All Your Financial Statements

Apr 12th, 2013
by Sean.
No comments yet

Manilla.com is the leading, free and secure service that helps consumers manage everything in their lives, all in one place. With a single sign-on, customers can manage their bills, finances, travel rewards, subscriptions and more — all through Manilla.com or the 4+ star user-rated mobile apps for the iPhone and Android.Manilla gives customers an automated, organized view of their account information; text and email reminders to pay bills and renew expiring daily deals, subscriptions, and travel rewards; and unlimited account document storage forever, for free.

I found Manilla very helpful because I want to go paperless with my financial statements. I have been manually scanning or downloading the statements from individual financial institutions and the process is very time consuming. Manilla does all the work for me and saves me a lot of time. Now I can just log in the account and see all my statements in one place, and they are all in digital format The documents are stored forever in Manilla. I no longer have to find physical storage space to store all the paper documents.

This is one of those tools/service that is a must-have for people who want to organize and track all their financial statements.
Sign up for a free Manilla account here.

ATM e-receipts at Citibank

Apr 6th, 2013
by Sean.
No comments yet

On all my  deposits in Citibank, which is my primary bank, I have been using their “Send my receipt to email” option since they have implemented this option. I am glad that Citibank has implemented this feature of sending digital receipt of my ATM transaction to email. This allows me to have an electronic record and it also helps reduce my paper clutter. Now I have less paper to worry about. This helps me go more “green” as I am going paperless. I will now have all my financial statements and receipts electronically.

 

 

What Is the March 1 Sequester?

Feb 25th, 2013
by Sean.
No comments yet

CNN explains the “Sequester” or “automatic cuts” in the video.

CNN Money shows the impacts from these “automatic cuts” in the “Sequester.”

Liberal Oasis TV talks more about the “Sequester” in detail.

President Obama explains and talks about the Sequester.

President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address

Feb 15th, 2013
by Sean.
No comments yet

For those of you who have not seen Obama’s speech or would want to see it again, the full speech video is here. What do you think of his speech in regards to improving the economy?

The Business of Cuddling

Feb 14th, 2013
by Sean.
No comments yet

Just when you thought when people cannot think of more creative ways to make money, a woman, Jackie Samuel starts a cuddling business in her own home in Rochester, NY and provides professional snuggling service. She charges $1 for every minute of cuddling service and even has a name for it. She calls it, “The Snuggery.” Apparently, her business is doing so well that she has to hire another snuggling professional.

How much can she make?

According to The Daily Mail, she makes $260 a day with her cuddling business. By calculation, at a rate of $1/min, 260 minutes of service at comes out to about 4 hours and 20 minutes of work a day. If she wants to make the popularly targeted $100K annual income, she would need to work 100,000 minutes per year, which means about 6.4 hours every day, 5 days a week for 52 weeks. 6.4 hours of work a day is still less than the hours most full time professionals put in to make the same $100K income.

For comparison, a professional masseuse may make $1 a minute, but which takes more physical work? A professional masseuse or a professional ‘cuddler’?

 

Entrepreneur spirit? Yes, we have to give that to her.

Creative? Yes.

Opportunity? In a niche market.

Legal? Yes, as long as it’s strictly cuddling.

Ethical? Yes/No. Depends on who you ask.

Money Generating Idea? Absolutely! Pays the bills for her.

Foreign Currency Fee Litigation Settlement Fund

Mar 5th, 2012
by Sean.
1 comment

I received a check recently for $18.04 from the Foreign Currency Fee Litigation Settlement Fund. It is from a settlement claim payment from a case where credit card companies didn’t properly disclose the foreign fees to consumers.

You may have received a check too from this settlement if you have used your credit card overseas.

For more information about the cases and the settlement, visit www.ccfsettlement.com or call 1-800-945-9890.

How Much is NBA Player Jeremy Lin Worth?

Feb 20th, 2012
by Sean.
No comments yet
Photo credit: SB Nation

 

Jeremy Lin, the Point Guard for New York Knicks has been making headlines in news everywhere. His story is amazing — undrafted and waived from two teams, Jeremy Lin has taken the NBA league by storm, leading the New York Knicks to seven consecutive wins plus an astonishing win against the defending champions, Dallas Mavericks.

 

Stats

In the first nine games with him in the starting lineup, Jeremy Lin has averaged 25 points, 52% field goals, 9.2 assists and 3.7 rebounds. Also he has achieved the highest score of 136 points in the first 5 games with the Knicks since the NBA-ABA merger in 1976, surpassing Charlie Scott, Dan Issel and Shaquille O’Neal.

Name Puns

His fame has gained him many new nicknames, such as LINsanity, LINcredible, LINtastic, Linderella, and even Lintendo.


So the biggest question is, how much is Jeremy worth?

 

According to the NBA:
  • From Feb. 4 to Feb. 12, Lin had the top-selling jersey at NBAstore.com, which has shipped Lin merchandise to 22 countries — Taiwan and Hong Kong were third and fourth behind the USA and Canada.
  • On Sina, the China’s version of Twitter, Mr. Lin went from 190,000 followers on Feb. 2 to more than 1 million followers as of Feb. 16. On Facebook, Mr. Lin went from 40,000 to 710,000 “likes” on his page as of Feb. 16 .
According to Delivery Agent, (which powers the Knicks’ online store)
  • Sales and traffic on the Knick’s online store are up by more than 3,000% in the past week.
According to SlamOnline.com
Photo credit: Slam Online
Salary
It’s fair to say that Jeremy Lin is a cash cow and is potentially worth lots of money. For now, his salary is only a mere $762,195 for this season. Given his fame and his potential, it’s logical to think his salary would go up, however, it would not justify his fame power. The real money comes from his name, a.k.a. branding and endorsements.

 

Madison Square Garden

Since he started playing in the starting lineup, Madison Square Garden sales went up and even Time Warner Cable and MSG had reached a deal so cable subscribers can watch the NBA games on cable now. During the period of the rise of Jeremy Lin, MSG’s stock price has risen more than 10% and hit a new 52-week high.

 

Nike Endorsement

Jeremy Lin has already signed a deal with Nike. This is only the start. Many companies will want to get his name and face on their products or services. His fame is not only in the U.S. but worldwide. His income will also come from the riches of Asia, ultimately pulling in large numbers from China and Taiwan.
It is difficult to put a number on his name, but with every game he wins, he seems to increase his “financial worth.” People see the scores he makes, but companies see the amount of revenue he can help them generate. Based on his past performance from the past two weeks, he has dollar signs written all over his head.

Endorsement Ideas

See some funny but interesting endorsement ideas for him.

Forbes Estimate
Forbes estimates his worth to be about $15 Million. (See video below)

 

Jeremy Lin’s Potential Worth

Jeremy Lin has the drive, the talent, and the vision to becoming big. With everything working together for him at this rate, he will explode in the US and international markets. My near-future estimate for Jeremy Lin’s worth is at around $20 Million.

 

President Obama State of the Union Address 2012

Feb 1st, 2012
by Sean.
No comments yet

For those of you who may have missed the State of the Union Address, here is a quick two-minute summary of President Obama’s speech.

For the full speech, watch this video.

For those who would like to read his speech, here is the full transcript.

 

101 Things To Do For $10 or Less from Time Out New York

Nov 16th, 2011
by Sean.
No comments yet

You want to have fun but you don’t want to spend a lot of money. Fun does not always require a bigger spending budget. Fortunately, for our New York friends, we have a list of 101 Things To Do For $10 or Less from Time Out New York. The activities include movies, museums, music, dances, parties, food tasting, parks, bowling and more. They are heavy on fun and light on your wallets.

 

Do you know of a fun and budget activity? Let us know in the comment section below.

U.S. Mint Cancels Credit Card Purchase on Dollar Coins

Nov 5th, 2011
by Sean.
No comments yet

The US Mint website now states:

The United States Mint has eliminated the credit and debit card purchase of $1 Coins through its Direct Ship Program effective July 22, 2011.

The announcement has since ended the benefit of ordering the $1 coins, which allowed you to rack up credit card rewards (miles/points/cash back). They have remove the incentive for people to order these coins. I suspect that there will be a huge decline in the demand of the $1 coins after the elimination of the credit card purchase. Baltimore’s reserve bank is sitting on an increasing pile of dollar coins.

I made decent use of the credit card program while it lasted, although I was not aggressive as some people who have ordered hundreds of thousands of coins. I also did my share to help circulate the coins by promoting and spending them.

 

 

 

 

← Earlier Posts