Lazy Man and Money

Amazon Echo, Revisited

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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.

Cinch Financial Could Put Me Out of Business…

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… 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.

Things I Like: Amazon Fire TV Stick

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It seems like has been forever since I’ve done a “Things I Like” article. I did a quick search and the last one was my NutriBullet Super Blender nearly 18 months ago.

Fortunately, a deserving product showed up at my door a couple of days ago: the Amazon Fire TV Stick. I like my tech gadgets, but it’s extremely rare that one gets “wife-approved.” The Fire stick is one such winning gadget. It’s the exact opposite of the $60 Ball I bought.

These TV sticks are all the rage, ever since Google ChromeCast wowed everyone with it. These sticks allow you to Internet-enable your television. It makes it easy to watch Netflix, listen to Pandora, even play games. Roku and even even Mozilla Firefox have gotten into the act. So of course Amazon had to join the party.

I jumped on Amazon’s Fire TV Stick when it was offered at $19. Now it is $39. I won’t lie, the introductory price gimmick got me. Paying $20 today hurts a lot less than paying $40 in a week from now.

It also didn’t hurt that I had a perfect use-case for a Fire TV Stick. My home has two televisions, one in the living room which gets most of the use, and one in the bedroom that rarely gets used. The living room one has a computer instead of a cable box eliminating cable box renting fees. The bedroom has the coaxial cable plugged into it. It’s essentially “good enough” considering how little we use it.

On rare occasions, such as when one of us is sick, the television can get a lot of use. For not a lot of money, and no additional subscription fees, there are now a ton of movies available via a handy remote control. Now if my wife gets sick she can watch a whole season of Orange is The New Black while she gets better I serve her chicken noodle soup.

We are more of a Netflix family than an Amazon Prime movie family. I think it’s because I never know what’s going to cost me more money on Amazon. With Netflix, I know there’s no pay-per-view. With Amazon Prime, I could see a movie, click into it, and find that it costs me money to rent (or in some cases buy) it. Of course Amazon wants to push these purchases and, as you’d expect, they give their own movies and television shows most of the screen real estate. However, it’s easy enough to go to the Netflix application and use that to watch whatever I want to.

I found a couple of interesting things with the Fire TV Stick that are worth mentioning. The recommended movies, at least to start, seemed to be those late night Cinemax adult movies. I don’t know if everyone gets this or if it’s just what Amazon thinks of me. (Thanks Amazon.) Maybe Amazon knows it’s a bedroom television and is giving my wife and I a subtle hint. In any case, my wife found it very weird. She quickly found the more mainstream movies.

The other thing that is worth mentioning is that there are a number of applications that I haven’t gotten a chance to try yet. There’s Plex, which is a media server. I have it on my living room computer/television, so there’s the chance I can stream videos upstairs. It’s a little more research to see how that works. There’s a Pandora app as well that I want to get set-up. It’ll be handy while I do laundry (on the list for later today) or maybe even when I’m in the shower.

You can do most, or perhaps all, of this stuff with ChromeCast or Roku. Google’s ChromeCast is even a little cheaper than the current $39 Fire Stick price. My friend had an issue with ChromeCast’s wifi. I don’t remember the exact issue, but it was something about it not working at the 5ghz that the rest of his gadgets did, or the 2.4ghz getting blocked with baby monitors/wireless phones. In any case, he couldn’t use it. Amazon’s stick is a more advanced processor and has more memory, so I presume it is a little snappier. Roku’s stick is about as expensive as Amazon’s. I’m sure it is great, but for a cheapskate like me paying $19 made it an impulse buy vs. $35 or more the competitors. In hindsight, it is probably well worth that money… I just didn’t realize it until I used it.

And that’s really the weird thing about this review. At $19 the Fire TV Stick is a screaming buy if you have a use case for it. At $39, it is a fair price for the functionality and probably a very good purchase… but psychologically it feels “expensive” given the previous much cheaper price.

So what do you say? Buy or don’t buy? Let me know in the comments.

Things I Like: NutriBullet Super Blender

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As I mentioned in my fruit dehydrating article, I have a slightly unhealthy addiction to kitchen gadgets. This makes me slightly susceptible to late night infomercials. Such was the case a couple of months ago, when I saw an infomercial for NutriBullet. The infomercial was over the top with its health claims, even blurring the lines (no I won’t link to the video) of what I consider legal. In short, they were pitching making the fruit shakes with their blender as a way to unlock the nutrients that will prevent diseases… at least that’s how I interpreted it.

I decided that it might be worth writing an article about this marketing that I considered deceptive. However, the infomercial was hypnotizing. Since my weakness for infomercials only extends to products that are very highly rated on Amazon, I went there to check out the reviews. That’s where I found that consumers really liked the product – there were 1,000 reviews with an average of a 4 rating. This wasn’t like MonaVie distributors saying that they like the product, these people weren’t getting paid to leave a good review.

After review after review mentioned that people lost 15 pounds after getting the NutriBullet, I figured I was going to give it a shot. The NutriBullet might claim to have a special blade that unlocks nutrients, but I think that’s just marketing-speak. It’s a blender, with high-powered motor. I don’t know how it compares to VitaMix or BlendTec, but having seen those blenders at around $400, the $100 price is closer to my blender budget. One of the keys for me (and my wife) was that it was easy to clean. The reviews were spot on in this point, the NutriBullet is easy to clean.

At the end of the day, the NutriBullet can be used for many things, but it really does one thing well… shakes/smoothies. I picked up a bag of frozen fruit from the local BJ’s (a New England regional warehouse like Costco) and typically have two fruit smoothies a day. I mix it up with some fresh bananas and some frozen berries (kick up the antioxidants!). I also add either Fage or Chobani Greek Yogurt (high protein, low carbs, no fat) or whey protein to make it a heartier snack. I tried adding kale and spinach when I first got it, but I added too much and didn’t like the result. I need to get back to that. I also experimented very briefly with adding ground flax-seed for omega 3’s and even some almonds. I think I need to blend more for them to really reach “smoothie” consistency, if they ever do. I expect it to be a little gritty. Overall, it’s a much cheaper and easier alternative to buying really expensive ViSalus shakes.

It’s been a couple of weeks and I’m down about 5 pounds. Like anything else, the trick is to consistently use it. In the heat waves that we had a couple of weeks ago it was a lifesaver. Even my wife, who is skeptical about any new kitchen gadget, has taken to it. So far, it’s like the Sodastream, a great product that worked its way into our lives and helped us be a little healthier than we would otherwise.

If you are looking for Nutribullet recipes, I recommend this website for further details on that.

FlightCar: Get Paid to Park at an Airport?

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I love the new sharing economy. Don’t know what that is? It’s websites that allow you lend and trade something that you have excess of for straight cash homey. For example, if you have a spare room in your house, you can list it on Air BNB and get some money. It’s a win-win, the person renting the space out gets a little mortgage help and the person staying at the place typically saves money from hotel prices. The room that was going to waste isn’t wasted any longer.

I recently wrote about a dog boarding service, DogVacay that does something similar with dog owners taking on other dogs for extra cash. Last week, I used it with my dog and the young lady had a small business set up around it.

On that trip, my wife and I decided to try a sharing website called FlightCar. Here’s how it works. It’s like typical airport parking except it is free. Why free? Because they’ll be able to rent out your car to someone else while you are gone. If they actually rent out your car, you make a little money (depending on the car and how old it is). If they don’t, well, you got free parking. Genius, right? They take care of cleaning and insurance. There are some larger questions like the hit you take in the value of your car once it has been in an accident (even if repaired).

Parking around Login airport in Boston can set you back around $15 a day, so for our 5-day trip, this was going to save us $75 even if no one rented our car. We were driving a clunker, so we only stood to get another $10 for the entire trip if it rented. I’m all-in for saving $75 and getting a cleaned car out of it.

When we left the house, our GPS had us at FlightCar’s destination at around 4:50PM, but by the time we got there, we were bumped right against the 6:15 check-in time that FlightCar gave us for our flight. Traffic and accidents were not in our favor. We pulled into the FlightCar location at 6:14, except for the fact that there was no FlightCar there. The address was some dead-end street and nothing resembling any kind of parking lot was there. We called FlightCar to get further directions. No answer, just leave a number. My wife called again, this time trying the emergency roadside assistance line – we were desperate as we our flight was leaving soon. No answer, just leave a number.

Tensions rose, I’m fairly sure we accused of FlightCar for all that is wrong or will ever be wrong with the world. We gave up on FlightCar and headed back to the terminal to park. The fastest parking I could find was in their premium parking area. On most days, it would have been really fast, but since it was so close to the terminal each car needed to be inspected. There was only car in front of us, which was fortunate. What was unfortunate is that the young lady couldn’t open her trunk for the inspectors. It seemed to have gotten stuck. It was at this point that my wife had to comment on her apparent lack of intelligence. Being the eternal optimist, I tried to focus on her incredible aesthetic qualities. After a few minutes, it seemed like the inspectors either gave up or fell for those qualities as they never got the trunk open (not sure how she was going to get luggage out to fly, that will forever be a mystery).

The premium parking area was $27 a day. FlightCar had gone from saving us money to costing us money. The wild-goose chase left our flight in doubt and it was the last of the evening (Virgin America doesn’t have that many flights to SFO a day). With baby in his stroller and all our luggage we managed to rush to the counter with literally one minute to spare… until the “good” news hit. Our flight had been delayed two hours due to clean up work of the plane from the crash the week before. I don’t know if anyone had been so happy to see their flight delayed. We had enough time to go move our car to cheaper parking, and at least save about $35. Little did we know that this delay would still cost us money, but that’s a story for another day, maybe later this week.

FlightCar did call us back and confirmed that we had the right address, but were in the wrong place. Maybe it was a problem with Magellan’s GPS data. If so, the only thing I can really be upset with FlightCar about was not manning their phones. We’ve decided that we may give them another shot at some point. If we do, we’ll give ourselves even more time and check the address with Google and Bing Maps to ensure we are going to the right place.