Financial Jesus

How Your Money Gets Stolen

This is a great video showing how ATM or Automated Teller Machine fraud is being done.
A scam like this is a lot easier to pull off than you would think - it only takes a few seconds to copy your card and information without you even noticing it!

The devices necessary to copy your credit or debit card are almost invisible to the inexperienced eye and are relatively cheap.

Look at this video to see a real episode of how stealing your card information is done and what you can do to avoid it!

This is a must see video! (If you don’t want to lose your money)

Remember:

2 Comments | Posted in » Interesting economics

5 Smart Lessons in Business Management

Lesson 1

A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next-door neighbor.
Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel.” After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob After a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 and leaves.

The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks, “Who was that?”
“It was Bob the next door neighbor,” she replies.
“Great!” the husband says, “did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?”

Moral of the story:
If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

Lesson 2

A priest offered a nun a lift.

She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg. The priest nearly had an accident. After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg.

The nun said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?” The priest removed his hand. But, changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again. The nun once again said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?”
The priest apologized “Sorry sister but the flesh is weak”.
Arriving at the convent, the nun sighed heavily and went on her way.
On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129

It said, “Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.”

Moral of the story:
If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.

Lesson 3

Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | Posted in » Money Psychology

Top 25 Richest People in The World in 2009 vs 2008

Here is a graph I put together using data from Forbes for 2008 and 2009 to see how much money the top 25 richest people in the world lost during the last year. All together the 25 richest people in the world lost 202.5 billion dollars in 1 year. Click on the graph for a larger image

The billionaires who lost most money during the last year

1. Lakshmi Mittal - 25.7 billion dollars
2. Warren Buffett - 25.0 billion dollars
3. Mukesh Ambani - 23.5 billion dollars
4. Bill Gates - 18 billion dollars

The only billionaire who made money during last year

The only billionaire in this list who made money during the last year was Michael Bloomberg.

He is the current mayor of New York and the owner of Bloomberg financial software services company. The reason he made 4.5 billion dollars last year was because the stock market has been crazy during the last months and his company Bloomberg L.P is the largest financial news delivering company in the world. Bloomberg sells financial data and news to banks, stock brokers, analysts and news agencies.

When the economy is doing badly he has a lot more news to sell!

12 Comments | Posted in » Financial Crisis, Interesting economics

Tent Cities in America

The current financial crisis has brought trouble to families from USA to Asia.

As always the rich are getting off the hook by getting bailed out by the government while the middle class and the poor are the ones taking the full hit.

Foreclosure rates in USA are up 30% compared to last year and almost 300 000 homes in the US  got a foreclosure notice in February. Things are equally bad in UK - home repossessions are up 92% compared to the third quarter of 2008.

People who lost their jobs and who used to live from paycheck to paycheck are the first ones to lose their home - no income means not being able to afford mortgage payments. To determine how long you can sustain your current lifestyle without losing your home you should check out how to calculate how much F*CK YOU money you have.

Jobless people are forced to move out of their homes. The one’s with family and friends who are willing to take them in are in luck! There are however some people who have no other option but to live in tents.

Shanty Towns - Tent Cities of the 1930’s

Millions of people lost their homes during the Great Depression. Those who weren’t lucky ended up in Shanty Towns - tent cities built by the poor for the poor. At one point Shanty Towns or Hoovervilles as they became known later were home to more than 1 million Americans.

Read the rest of this entry »

10 Comments | Posted in » Financial Crisis

Change Has Come To America

This is one of those things that I know I shouldn’t post but I’m doing it anyway!

Condoleezza Rice talking about George W. Bush

Michelle Obama - talking about her husband Barack Obama

Via LOLfinance.com

3 Comments | Posted in » Fun

The Only Investment that Doesn’t Go Down In Value

The Dow Jones has lost over half of what it was worth less than 2 years ago. Most mutual funds have lost even more - up to 80% of all their money.

With the current financial crisis in full swing - it seems that whatever you put your money into - you will still lose. Stocks are making new lows, mutual funds are losing value, house prices are dropping and commodity prices are coming down from the stars.

It seems that the safest way to take care of your money is to stay away from investing as far as possible! Just keep your money stashed under the mattress and hope that no one finds it!

There is however another possibility.

Art - the only investment that goes up

Throughout time art has been an obsession for the super rich. There is a good reason for that - they tend to have classy taste!

The problem with art and the rich is however that there is not enough unique and classy art to go around for all the rich people. In other words - there are more rich people than there is unique and rare art. Thanks to the law of supply and demand - this means that whenever you have managed to buy a true masterpiece there will already be a line of people behind your door that want to buy your newly acquired painting for an even larger amount.

Investing in art has some troublesome aspects when compared to usual investing - you want to physically move your newly acquired paintings from one place to another while making sure that the paintings don’t get damaged or stolen. Luckily there are special Art Storage companies to do just that - they take your painting, keep it safe and even hold it for you as long as you want.

I’m Not Super Rich! Can I still invest in art?

Well, the short answer is - No! But the good news is that the longer answer is - Yes!

The simple truth is that when you don’t have the money to buy the multi million paintings you will be left with the cheap stuff.
Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Posted in » How to get rich

Blog Income Report - February 2009

My income goal in February was $77.63 - I didn’t achieve it but came pretty close. While my income in January 2009 was only $22.37, I managed to almost triple it in February.

Here are the income stats of Financial Jesus for February 2009.

Google Adsense - $16.65

Text Links Ads - $22.61

Direct Links - $21.5

Total earnings for February 2009 - $60.76

What happened in February?

New kinds of ads

I tested Adbrite.com ads but after only 2 day I felt that they were not working and abandoned them. For some reason the code I used never showed real ads but only a link that allowed those interested to buy a link on my website - I am pretty sure I messed up and therefore will probably test Adbrite again pretty soon. If you are familiar with Adbrite and know what I did wrong - let me know!

I managed to sell a link in one of my posts for 20 dollars - I am not sure if I will manage to do it again in March so achieving the same amount of income can prove difficult.

New Theme

I spent 168 dollars on the Thesis Wordpress theme to radically improve the design and layout of financialjesus.com. This is the first time ever that I have spent money doing something for this blog - hopefully it will help to lift things up to a new level eventually!

As you are probably noticing right know - the new theme is not up yet and I am not certain when it will be - probably not before April.

Working on a new Website - LOL Finance

I am working on a new site called LOL Finance - it is a website that publishes daily funny pictures, stories and videos about finance. The site is currently under construction and I have not officially launched it yet but I am hoping to do so in March.
It is also my first test regarding the use of the Thesis theme - before converting Financial Jesus over I will try to get the feel of it to make the customization process easier!

Income goal for March 2009

$100

I sold some links in February that allowed me to temporarily pump up the income, but at the same time I didn’t react on some offers that would have allowed me to increase my revenues even more. Hopefully I will have more courage to take up these extra offers in March!

If anyone has positive experience with some ad networks in addition to Google Adsense - please let me know so I could test them out. I am willing to become your referral!

Don’t forget to sign up below to get updated how I did in March!

7 Comments | Posted in » Goals

Video: Financial Crisis Explained for Good

Are you having trouble understanding the current financial crisis?

Maybe you should have “The Talk” with your dad.

No Comments | Posted in » Fun

Failure - the Key to Success

Here is an inspirational video of Michael Jordon that is based on his world famous quote (see below).

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Michael Jordan

2 Comments | Posted in » Motivational

Questions From a Job Interview at Google

I happened on an interesting blog post at EmptyVoices.com about some job interview questions being asked at Google.

Here are the 10 along with some of my thoughts that I found most interesting.

1

How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?

This question is not as difficult as it first seems - everyone has a sense of how large a bus and a golf ball is - so what you have to do is calculate the approximate volume of the bus and see how many times it’s larger than the golf ball.

2

You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

There are a number of different solutions proposed to this question on Reddit but it seems that none of them are 100% accurate. The most popular answers seem to be “lie down and hope that the blades won’t hit you”. Someone tested this solution with an actual nickel and found out that the air drag generated by the blades will make it impossible for the coin to be still. Other popular answers include “climb out because the wall of the blender is sloped” and “you’d be able to jump out”. Someone also noted that this might be a trick question because “one wouldn’t survive the throwing into the blender”. It seems that the objective of this question is to get an understanding of the interviewee’s problem solving skills - it might be that there is no one and only correct answer.

3

How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?

To answer this question you should have an understanding about Seattle - how many people does it have and how many windows does the city have on average per person. With these numbers you should be able to come up with a pretty good ball park figure.

4

Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.

I don’t have an eight year old nephew

5

How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?

This one is a logic question and is actually quite simple if you are any good at visualizing things.

6

Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?

This one is quite difficult! I looked around the internet and found an answer that seems to be true but in order to make it more interesting for you I will publish it on Wednesday in the comments.

7

If you look at a clock and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands?

This is another logic question - and no the answer is not zero!

8

You are at a party with a friend and 10 people are present including you and the friend. your friend makes you a wager that for every person you find that has the same birthday as you, you get $1; for every person he finds that does not have the same birthday as you, he gets $2. would you accept the wager?

No? According to an article on Wikipedia when there are at least 23 random people in a room the probability of meeting someone with the same birthday as you becomes greater than 50%.

9

How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

This is another easier question. If you know that the total world population is about 6.5 billion and make an educated guess that every 50 000th person in the world is a piano tuner you get 130 000 piano tuners

10

You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share but live to enjoy it?

The correct answer is that one pirate ends up with 98 percent of the gold. But the important question is which pirate and why? Check out Wikipedia for the answer.

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6 Comments | Posted in » Fun