Review Archives - Lazy Man and Money

My 2015 Financial Year in Review

January 20, 2016 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

I thought about reviewing my 2015 finances at the end of the year, but I decided against it. I didn’t want it to get lost in the shuffle of all the other year-end reviews. Plus if you were anything like me, you were focused on the holidays. I didn’t have time to read too many article, much less in-depth ones covering a whole year.

Finally, I want to publish what I feel are my best articles when people are mostly likely around to read it. Now is a great time, because you can learn from my mistakes and have a terrific 2016, right?

I started to write this and realized that I had a ginormous amount to say on each area. It didn’t make a lot of sense to put it all in one article and lull you to sleep, so I divided it into a few different areas that I’ll cover over the next couple of weeks. (If you find this stuff boring, don’t worry, I’ll be working in other content as well.)

Here are the areas, I’m covering:

The first of the series will be posted in a few hours. I will update this post and link to the articles as they go live.

I’ve written most of the articles already and they have a common theme. They all start out with a challenging situation. In fact, the news on almost all fronts looks very bad. However, if you can make it to the end, you’ll find that overall each area has positives that may even outweigh the negatives.

It may sound trite to suggest that everyone should review their last financial year, but they really sound. If I didn’t have a personal finance blog, I doubt I would have sat down and wrote it out. I learned a lot by taking the time to put it on ~~paper~~ screen. I’m also a lot more optimistic on where my finances are going now that I’ve blasted through most of the challenges.

Amazon Echo, Revisited

June 2, 2015 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

Last year (by a few hours), I reviewed Amazon Echo (read the review).

The Echo is an odd device that doesn’t seem to sit any existing category of consumer electronics. It is a digital information assistant like Apple’s Siri, Google’s “Okay Google”, or Microsoft’s Cortana. However, it isn’t designed to be portable. It also wasn’t released with a large base of knowledge. It is still far, far behind of the those Big Three phone platforms.

Instead of being portable it has very good speakers and microphones. It’s always listening for the key word, “Alexa” that tells it to pay attention to the next command. I’ve had it work from over 30 feet away when there are no other distracting sounds.

When I last reviewed the Echo, I was one of the first people to receive it. It couldn’t do too much more than play music. And the music was mostly limited to Amazon’s Prime library. It has Bluetooth, so I could pair it with my phone and run music through that. It works fine, except when you do that Alexa (the Echo) becomes kind of dumb. I can’t tell it to find the Aerosmith MP3s on my phone and play them.

You could do a few other things such as tell Alexa to set a timer or add an item to a shopping list. (Unfortunately, the shopping list wouldn’t work with Wunderlist, where I keep my lists).

In short, the Echo could do quite a few different things, but nothing particularly great. I bought in because I liked the concept and put some faith behind Amazon’s engineers being able to expand what it can do.

Since that review, Amazon has sent me regular updates of what they’ve added. Here’s a few of them:

Sports scores – This was kind of a no-brainer. I’m almost surprised it didn’t launch with them.
Traffic information – You have to set up your standard commute online first, but then you can simply ask, “Alexa, what is the traffic like?” Since I work from home, this isn’t particularly useful to me, but it could be handy for a few people.
Link Your Pandora account – This was a big one for me because I listen to Pandora more than my own music collection of MP3s.

I want to expand on that last one a bit. It is so much easier to ask Alexa to “play my Pandora” station than in it is to use any app. When I use the Amazon Fire TV Stick in my bedroom, I have to turn on the television, switch the source to the TV stick, and then navigate to the Pandora application. While the Fire TV stick has other advantages, score a win for the Echo for playing my music as soon as I can think about it.

These are all small changes to things that the Echo could do out of the box.

There’s one more big addition that has come about since my original review. The Echo can actually controlling items in your home.

For example Echo now works with Belkin’s WeMo Switch to allow you to turn on and off appliances. That might not be the most exciting thing in the world, but has been the basic building block of home automation for years.

The other thing that Echo can do is work with Philips Hue Lightbulbs. These bulbs are clearly for the “early adopter” audience. The bulbs change colors and can even sync with shows like 12 Monkeys on the Syfy network (which you should definitely catch). It’s out of my budget for the novelty, but it would be interesting to see my room’s change lighting with the action of my television. The Red Forest on the show was freaky enough without my whole room turning red.

The Echo can’t change the colors of the light bulbs right now. It is limited to turning them on and off and dimming them.

Again, this isn’t super-exciting, but it is baby steps. I don’t think locking and unlocking doors is too far away. If you have a lock that is wifi enabled, I would expect it to be coming down the pick any day now.

What I’m really hoping for though is for Alexa to read my email to me as I make breakfast. (If you are concerned about the privacy risk here, there are ways that it can be implemented without that issue.) I’d like it to work with my calendar. Tell me what appointments I have when I ask and add appointments when I tell it what to add.

If the Echo can work with my Pandora station there should be no limitation to working with my other accounts. Maybe in 6 months, I’ll be writing another review to tell you about it.

Who Wants In on the DRAFTApp Private Beta?

May 14, 2015 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

This post is part of the #IwantDRAFT campaign with support from DRAFT, the app that uses crowdsourced data to help you understand and compare your portfolio, in partnership with Kasai Media. As always, the words and opinions, are mine and mine alone.

DraftApp

When I lived in Silicon Valley, I was fortunate enough to attend Finovate, a conference of financial companies, most of them very small start-ups. Companies like Mint and Lending Club cut their teeth there. I like to call that time in 2008 the Golden Age of consumer financial applications. As the years went on, companies seemed to put their focus on creating products that they could sell to banks. Those are great too, but they are a pain to write about. People can’t use them right away.

Over the last couple of days, a new company, DRAFT, has used Finovate to launch a new consumer-focused application for tracking your money. It’s 2008 all over again, and I mean that in an awesome way. They are opening up their private beta and all you have to do is give your email address to get in line.

So what is DRAFTApp? It’s a mobile application designed to help you manage your money in one place. It

One of the most interesting things to me is the crowdfunding aspect of draft. You can see this in the image. It gives you not only your returns, but also a comparison with the top 10% of DRAFTApp users. This really shines when it comes to understanding the investment fees that you’ll pay. I’ve seen hundred of charts about how fees greatly reduce investment returns… and perhaps I take it for granted that regular readers have seen some of them as well. Of course DRAFTApp highlights this as well.

I will be signing up for DRAFTApp just for this alone. (I’m going to bring down that Top 10% average… ha ha!)

One thing that I won’t focus too much on is the investment returns of the top 10%. By definition 90% of people are going to be disappointed in it. I had significant money in Europe, which didn’t perform well last year. I know my performance is going to be disappointing. I want to be careful to not let this disappoint change my diversification to chase winners.

That said, it is refreshing to have other options than just a comparison of my portfolio to the S&P 500. Many tools use a few basic indexes and in the last year, I didn’t compare well with that either. In most cases your portfolio isn’t an index, so I find such comparisons odd anyway.

There are a few more features that I could highlight, but I think part of the fun is discovering them on your own. So why not join the waitlist and give it a shot? You’ve got nothing to lose

Book Review: Failure to Launch No More

April 20, 2015 by Lazy Man 4 Comments

I usually start every book review of mine with an usual disclaimer… I usually don’t like reading books. My reading speed is extremely slow and I’d prefer to have all the information distilled into 10-20 pages rather than 200 or more.

I often come away thinking that the cost of reading the book is not actually the money spent on the book, but the opportunity cost of my time to read it.

The book I am reviewing today is different.

Failure To Launch No More by Martin Dasko is well worth your time to read it.

I read it in around two hours… as I was doing a little multitasking.

What about the cost of the book? As a fan of the awesome Studenomics website, I subscribed to his mailing list. Dasko sent out an email about a number of things, but in it he mentioned that the Kindle price was a “damn buck.”

The price is a little more now, but my thinking still hasn’t changed… if you don’t have a couple of hours and a couple of damn bucks lying around, just quit trying to launch a company or sell a product.

Since there’s little cost, the next question is, “How good is the book?”

The short answer is that it is very good if you read it in the right context. It isn’t trying to be How to Win Friends & Influence People or The Power of Habit. Don’t expect something that was painfully researched in detail for years and years. It is designed to get you motivated to get off your butt and launch your business… with a focus on practical advice.

I’m usually not into motivational books. They seem to be heavy on “follow your passion” and telling you what you want to hear. Failure to Launch No More takes a practical approach to starting your business. It forces you to look at your financials to see if you can actually live while you are getting going.

My favorite part of the book came early on. Who do you get advice about your business from?

Many people turn to family or friends, but they can be terrible resources. They discourage you from taking a risk so you don’t get hurt. Or conversely they may overpraise you, setting you up for disappointment times get tough.

I often write about multi-level marketing/pyramid schemes and people often look for advice here too. In most cases family and friends give accurate advice to stay away. Thus from my perspective I was ready to say that Dasko gives poor advice.

He follows it up in the book with who you can get great advice from. It is suggested that someone with no vested interested in your success or failure is usually a good sounding board. He takes it a step further and says that you should listen to critics:

“We need to hear the truth sometimes. Thank a critic for being honest.”

This is the kind of practical advice that goes beyond the simple motivational speaking to get that project launched.

There were at least another half-dozen points in this book that I found enlightening. After nine years of blogging and doing a ton of research on these kinds of things, I’m very happy when I learn one or two truly enlightening things a day.

It is well worth it to read something that wasn’t just re-hashing the same old crap… and even better that it didn’t take all day.

If you’ve got a couple of hours and $10 you could go to the movies and watch people blow stuff up. Or for half the price, you could get some information to put you on the path to financial freedom. Suddenly, spending a couple damn bucks on
Failure To Launch No More seems like a good idea doesn’t it?

Cinch Financial Could Put Me Out of Business…

March 18, 2015 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

… and I don’t mind one bit.

This young generation has it so well. In my day, there were no websites to help you pick all the best financial tools. Of course, we had to walk uphill to class through 5 feet of snow (both ways!). And we liked it… we loved it!

My Grumpy Old Man is still a work in progress. I’m no Dana Carvey.

Nowadays, it seems there are new websites popping up all the time to help you with your financial decisions. I’d say that I get somewhere between 40-60 emails a year by companies.

However, a couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by one company who stood out from the pack. Yes they are based in the suburbs of Boston, and we know how I love the city of Boston. When I lived in Silicon Valley, I could throw a rock and hit a dozen start-up companies creating websites to help you with your finances. In Boston, there are very few.

The company that contacted me was Cinch Financial. They are new. It’s rare for any new company to have everything figured out. It’s laughable to compare what Mint was like in April of 2007 when I first saw their unreleased beta to what it is today. That said, there’s a lot to like about Cinch.

Cinch gives you recommendations in four areas: credit cards, banks, mortgages, and auto insurance. They start with thousands and products and whittle them down based on factors like availability where you live, reputation, customer service, good deals, and more. It’s worth watching going to their website to see the animation of all the companies disappearing through their screening process.

I particularly liked how they score credit cards. Instead of giving you a few hundred to look at like many credit card sites, they start at 2,300 and knock out 97% of them. So there are under quality “Cinch Pick” cards. Their software asks what’s important to me and directs me to the appropriate cards.

So How Does it Work in Practice?

When I took it for a spin, it recommended three cards for me. Two of them I already carry in my wallet. The third was essentially an equivalent to what I already had. In fact, I’d recommend that card to my own mom. (Seriously. Mom, it’s the Citi Double Cash Card and it beats the Fidelity Retirement Rewards card by Amex I use because you can use it in more places. It’ll give you the equivalent of 2% cash back on everything you buy.)

I couldn’t ask for it to do any better.

With banking, it suggested Capital 360 and Ally Bank. I have heard good things about both. However, I’m not moving away from USAA any time soon. I asked why USAA wasn’t recommended and it was because you have to be military to be eligible and their software wasn’t quite at the level of asking that at this early stage.

I wasn’t looking for a mortgage and the tool didn’t mention refinances, so I didn’t give that software a try. I did notice that there were no Cinch Picks yet in my state. The auto insurance also lacked Cinch Picks. I’m happy that they up-front with an “I can’t help you” message rather than just passing me to a nationwide company that may be less than ideal.

That brings me to an important point. They could easily have recommended Geico after Geico dropped off a bag of money on their door and I don’t think anyone would have batted an eye. However, on the front of their website in the center they make it quite clear, “We only show you the best financial products, and we don’t get paid by the companies on our site.”

An obvious question would be, “How does Cinch make money?” Typically companies such as Mint and Credit Karma do make money when they refer you to a finance service. In my experience, those companies send people to sound, reputable financial services such as an American Express credit card or Vanguard brokerage services.

Cinch doesn’t make this way. The person I was talking said, “Today, we focus on building the best possible product and user experience, and we figure the revenue model will become clear once we have something that users love.”

BillSnap: An Interesting Feature

They have a feature called BillSnap where you take a picture and upload it to the website. They analyze it and tell you how you can save money. It sounds good in theory, but I’m going to reserve judgment for a few reasons:

Is It Helpful? – A number of bills like utilities can’t be negotiated that much.
What About Privacy? – I don’t know if I want them to be reviewing my purchases. Are they going to give me lifestyle feedback such as “Hey you eat out too much?” What if a rogue employee got the account number on a credit card and was able to use it? They would likely need security codes and expiration dates to do any serious harm. However, there’s a reason why I (and many, many other people) shred their bills. It feels like it defeats the purpose to upload them over the Internet.
What are Paper Bills? – Cinch suggests uploading mortgage and insurance bills. I have put insurance bills on auto-pay and paperless statements long ago. My mortgage is also on auto-pay, but I do get statements every month because I want to see the progress made. This leads me to…
Is Any of this Going to Help ME? – I’m not the typical Cinch client. I’m weirdly obsessed with personal finance and I know that. So am I going to upload my 15-year refinanced mortgage at 2.75%? I just wrote 600 words on why switching from Straight Talk to Cricket Wireless may save me 8 dollars a month (article not published yet).
Someone else may get good value from the BillSnap feature and maybe I would under the right set of circumstances. For me, personally, getting a bill to test and any privacy concerns outweigh the value I expect to receive. The average consumer will be different, but these are the kinds of things I think about. (See, weirdly obsessed with personal finance.)

I’d love for a reader to try out the BillSnap feature and tell me how it works. If you do, please contact me.

Conclusion

I saved what I liked best about Cinch for the end. You don’t have to login or create an account. It is probably helpful to create one to save your progress, but I could get a bank recommendation quick and easy.

The most interesting thing for me is that they are focusing on creating value and growing mindshare. I think when you do that and help people, you’ll find that the opportunities for money will follow.

The only problem I have is that if Cinch Financial is successful, they might not need personal finance bloggers like me to review banks and brokerages. I’d be happy with that outcome, because it means that everyone is great service.

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