Newly 25-year-old Lauren Conrad has spent much of the last few months being trailed by cameras for her next reality project with MTV. Unfortunately, it was confirmed by EW today that the network is not going ahead with the project. MTV's Head of Programming David Janollari commented on the cancellation and said, "We decided not to go ahead with the show. She did do a pilot. There were talks about whether we could somehow manage to put together a special based on that footage but that's also a big question mark based on her interest in that and the finances. We love her! We would love her on our network!" It seems as though they're open to a collaboration in the future, but for now, fans will have to get their LC fix through fashion and books.
Lauren released a statement about the news saying, "We sold a show to MTV, filmed it and are really proud of the final result. MTV felt the subject matter was too high brow for their audience and offered me the opportunity to change the show by incorporating more of my personal life. We agreed going into the project that this show would be an aspirational one, focusing on my career and my goals and not my personal relationships. We delivered the show that we sold and are sorry MTV didn't feel their viewers were savvy enough to appreciate it."
So, tell us — are you sad Lauren's reality series isn't happening?
LaunchBox Digital, a VC firm specializing in angel, seed, and early stage investments, just wrapped up its third annual 12-week startup mentoring program. Similar to Y Combinator and TechStars, LaunchBox invests seed capital of $20,000 into startup teams and provides them with 12 weeks of education, mentorship, and access to advisers. The following 7 LaunchBox10 companies are graduating from this year’s program and will be going live as part of LaunchBox Demo Day, where the companies will present their businesses to potential investors and strategic partners.
Without further ado, here are the graduates:
CityPockets (Crunchbase profile): Today, we live in the world of the Groupon clone, and thanks to the Google-shunning colossus, “daily deal” websites now litter the Web. These sites have been a big hit among mom and pop shops and small businesses because they can be such an effective way to attract new, local customers. The problem for these merchants, however, has been converting new customers into loyal, repeat visitors. According to LaunchBox, less than 15% of “deal jumpers” return to the same merchant again without another deal offer. On the whole, these merchants struggle to retain the influx of new customers, failing to take the steps to establish that critical, lasting relationship with the consumer.
CityPockets.com is a real-time, self-serve merchant CRM platform that aims to address customer retention issues by allowing merchants to more easily capture user contact info and to offer repeat discounts. In addition, the platform empowers merchants to manage gaps in supply and demand by sending out time-sensitive, limited-quantity offers whenever it makes sense for their businesses. Customers opt-in to follow their favorite merchants via CityPockets’ web and mobile apps.
Businesses interested in being part of the CityPockets Merchant Network can sign up here, and Daily Deal users can sign up at CityPockets.com to access and keep track of all voucher purchases from across popular Daily Deal sites on a single platform, and eventually receive more offers from relevant merchants of their choice.
FiscalPie (Crunchbase profile): FiscalPie breaks down the barrier between personal finance and social networks by providing users with Facebook applications that enable users to compare their finances with others and, in turn, learn how to make more educated financial decisions. One such FiscalPie application, “Retire Where?” shows you which cities you’ll be able to afford in retirement and allows you to compare your it with the future location of your friends.
FiscalPie works to make the myriad sources of financial information on the Web more reflective of your own specific circumstances—while keeping your information private —by creating an anonymous network of people that share similar financial profiles. Until the individual truly becomes part of the conversation, financial information has little significance. FiscalPie is hoping to start that dialog—socially.
HEALTHeME (Crunchbase profile): HEALTHeME delivers treatments that empower those struggling with weight, stress, and mood issues to better manage their health via the web and their mobile phone. The HEALTHeME platform combines clinical treatments and artificial intelligence to create customized behavior modification plans based on users’ lifestyles, health goals, and personality type. HEALTHeME then leverages real-time coaching, social networks and user’s healthcare providers to offer a truly personalized user experience. Would love to see an app for this, too.
Keona Health (Crunchbase profile): Keona Health is a company that optimizes admissions for primary care providers, increasing both productivity and cost savings. Keona’s Patient Decision Support system empowers patients with instant, personalized advice that aims to resolve up to 10% of patient cases at home. Triage nurses review each case, but with the goal of being 5 times faster and with more comprehensive safety checks than before. As a result of the greater emphasis on in-home consultation, when patients need to travel into the office to see a doctor, they should find reduced delays and wait times.
Keona has partnered with UNC and Duke to develop a decision engine that has already analyzed over 1,000 real medical records, and UNC Campus Health Services is acting as Keona’s first beta customer. During 2011, Keona Health plans to expand to several additional universities.
Leaguescape (Crunchbase profile): Leaguescape is a new platform for fantasy sports that combines social gaming and betting and allows you to collect all your fantasy sports leagues in one place. Like the Pokerstars or Full Tilt Poker of fantasy sports, Leaguescape allows fantasy sports enthusiasts to manage and bet on their season leagues and get their daily fix of fantasy sports with a variety of game offerings that enable users to draft, watch, and win on a daily basis.
Drawing on the online poker model, Leaguescape provides all things a fantasy sports bettor could need, including a variety of gaming types, rewards, and promotions.
Slipstream (Crunchbase profile): The likelihood is that your Twitter stream is an unfavorable mix of a few things you care about and a lot you don’t. You don’t want to miss out on important news and events, but you don’t have time to read everything. Slipstream wants to rid your stream of irrelevant Tweets.
Today, Slipstream launched its third prototype, a Chrome extension that lets you hide tweets on Twitter.com. It works seamlessly to help you get rid of things like Foursquare checkins, paper.li mentions, or when people you’re following start live-tweeting events. Gonezo. Simply click the “Hide” link that Slipstream adds to the end of every tweet and begin filtering your stream. It’s that easy.
Spring Metrics (Crunchbase profile): Spring Metrics helps you grow your online business by providing a deeper understanding of your customers and how they interact with your website. Spring Metrics seeks to make complex web analytics more friendly and digestible for marketers and e-commerce professionals who don’t want to wrestle with the complexity of traditional analytics products.
With an easy-to-use interface that requires no coding knowledge, Spring Metrics eliminates the hassle of creating conversion funnels and goals. The company’s real-time dashboard offers an array of conversion-oriented metrics, and the “Insight Engine” unearths actionable patterns in the data—patterns aimed at helping turn more visitors into paying customers.
benchcraft company scam
<b>News</b> Corp. exec: “The right time” to sell Myspace | VentureBeat
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining ...
Reducing salt in teen diet could have big impact on future health <b>...</b>
Cutting back on salt in teenagers' diets by as little as one-half teaspoon, or three grams, a day, could reduce the number of young adults with high blood pressure by 44 to 63 percent, according to new research presented Sunday, Nov. ...
Solar & Wind Energy <b>News</b> of the Last Week (or So) – CleanTechnica <b>...</b>
CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views's authors are supported by a revenue-sharing agreement with the company that operates CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views, Important Media. Of course, it's never enough ...
bench craft company reviews
Newly 25-year-old Lauren Conrad has spent much of the last few months being trailed by cameras for her next reality project with MTV. Unfortunately, it was confirmed by EW today that the network is not going ahead with the project. MTV's Head of Programming David Janollari commented on the cancellation and said, "We decided not to go ahead with the show. She did do a pilot. There were talks about whether we could somehow manage to put together a special based on that footage but that's also a big question mark based on her interest in that and the finances. We love her! We would love her on our network!" It seems as though they're open to a collaboration in the future, but for now, fans will have to get their LC fix through fashion and books.
Lauren released a statement about the news saying, "We sold a show to MTV, filmed it and are really proud of the final result. MTV felt the subject matter was too high brow for their audience and offered me the opportunity to change the show by incorporating more of my personal life. We agreed going into the project that this show would be an aspirational one, focusing on my career and my goals and not my personal relationships. We delivered the show that we sold and are sorry MTV didn't feel their viewers were savvy enough to appreciate it."
So, tell us — are you sad Lauren's reality series isn't happening?
LaunchBox Digital, a VC firm specializing in angel, seed, and early stage investments, just wrapped up its third annual 12-week startup mentoring program. Similar to Y Combinator and TechStars, LaunchBox invests seed capital of $20,000 into startup teams and provides them with 12 weeks of education, mentorship, and access to advisers. The following 7 LaunchBox10 companies are graduating from this year’s program and will be going live as part of LaunchBox Demo Day, where the companies will present their businesses to potential investors and strategic partners.
Without further ado, here are the graduates:
CityPockets (Crunchbase profile): Today, we live in the world of the Groupon clone, and thanks to the Google-shunning colossus, “daily deal” websites now litter the Web. These sites have been a big hit among mom and pop shops and small businesses because they can be such an effective way to attract new, local customers. The problem for these merchants, however, has been converting new customers into loyal, repeat visitors. According to LaunchBox, less than 15% of “deal jumpers” return to the same merchant again without another deal offer. On the whole, these merchants struggle to retain the influx of new customers, failing to take the steps to establish that critical, lasting relationship with the consumer.
CityPockets.com is a real-time, self-serve merchant CRM platform that aims to address customer retention issues by allowing merchants to more easily capture user contact info and to offer repeat discounts. In addition, the platform empowers merchants to manage gaps in supply and demand by sending out time-sensitive, limited-quantity offers whenever it makes sense for their businesses. Customers opt-in to follow their favorite merchants via CityPockets’ web and mobile apps.
Businesses interested in being part of the CityPockets Merchant Network can sign up here, and Daily Deal users can sign up at CityPockets.com to access and keep track of all voucher purchases from across popular Daily Deal sites on a single platform, and eventually receive more offers from relevant merchants of their choice.
FiscalPie (Crunchbase profile): FiscalPie breaks down the barrier between personal finance and social networks by providing users with Facebook applications that enable users to compare their finances with others and, in turn, learn how to make more educated financial decisions. One such FiscalPie application, “Retire Where?” shows you which cities you’ll be able to afford in retirement and allows you to compare your it with the future location of your friends.
FiscalPie works to make the myriad sources of financial information on the Web more reflective of your own specific circumstances—while keeping your information private —by creating an anonymous network of people that share similar financial profiles. Until the individual truly becomes part of the conversation, financial information has little significance. FiscalPie is hoping to start that dialog—socially.
HEALTHeME (Crunchbase profile): HEALTHeME delivers treatments that empower those struggling with weight, stress, and mood issues to better manage their health via the web and their mobile phone. The HEALTHeME platform combines clinical treatments and artificial intelligence to create customized behavior modification plans based on users’ lifestyles, health goals, and personality type. HEALTHeME then leverages real-time coaching, social networks and user’s healthcare providers to offer a truly personalized user experience. Would love to see an app for this, too.
Keona Health (Crunchbase profile): Keona Health is a company that optimizes admissions for primary care providers, increasing both productivity and cost savings. Keona’s Patient Decision Support system empowers patients with instant, personalized advice that aims to resolve up to 10% of patient cases at home. Triage nurses review each case, but with the goal of being 5 times faster and with more comprehensive safety checks than before. As a result of the greater emphasis on in-home consultation, when patients need to travel into the office to see a doctor, they should find reduced delays and wait times.
Keona has partnered with UNC and Duke to develop a decision engine that has already analyzed over 1,000 real medical records, and UNC Campus Health Services is acting as Keona’s first beta customer. During 2011, Keona Health plans to expand to several additional universities.
Leaguescape (Crunchbase profile): Leaguescape is a new platform for fantasy sports that combines social gaming and betting and allows you to collect all your fantasy sports leagues in one place. Like the Pokerstars or Full Tilt Poker of fantasy sports, Leaguescape allows fantasy sports enthusiasts to manage and bet on their season leagues and get their daily fix of fantasy sports with a variety of game offerings that enable users to draft, watch, and win on a daily basis.
Drawing on the online poker model, Leaguescape provides all things a fantasy sports bettor could need, including a variety of gaming types, rewards, and promotions.
Slipstream (Crunchbase profile): The likelihood is that your Twitter stream is an unfavorable mix of a few things you care about and a lot you don’t. You don’t want to miss out on important news and events, but you don’t have time to read everything. Slipstream wants to rid your stream of irrelevant Tweets.
Today, Slipstream launched its third prototype, a Chrome extension that lets you hide tweets on Twitter.com. It works seamlessly to help you get rid of things like Foursquare checkins, paper.li mentions, or when people you’re following start live-tweeting events. Gonezo. Simply click the “Hide” link that Slipstream adds to the end of every tweet and begin filtering your stream. It’s that easy.
Spring Metrics (Crunchbase profile): Spring Metrics helps you grow your online business by providing a deeper understanding of your customers and how they interact with your website. Spring Metrics seeks to make complex web analytics more friendly and digestible for marketers and e-commerce professionals who don’t want to wrestle with the complexity of traditional analytics products.
With an easy-to-use interface that requires no coding knowledge, Spring Metrics eliminates the hassle of creating conversion funnels and goals. The company’s real-time dashboard offers an array of conversion-oriented metrics, and the “Insight Engine” unearths actionable patterns in the data—patterns aimed at helping turn more visitors into paying customers.
benchcraft company portland or
<b>News</b> Corp. exec: “The right time” to sell Myspace | VentureBeat
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining ...
Reducing salt in teen diet could have big impact on future health <b>...</b>
Cutting back on salt in teenagers' diets by as little as one-half teaspoon, or three grams, a day, could reduce the number of young adults with high blood pressure by 44 to 63 percent, according to new research presented Sunday, Nov. ...
Solar & Wind Energy <b>News</b> of the Last Week (or So) – CleanTechnica <b>...</b>
CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views's authors are supported by a revenue-sharing agreement with the company that operates CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views, Important Media. Of course, it's never enough ...
bench craft company reviews
[reefeed]
benchcraft company portland or
benchcraft company portland or
<b>News</b> Corp. exec: “The right time” to sell Myspace | VentureBeat
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining ...
Reducing salt in teen diet could have big impact on future health <b>...</b>
Cutting back on salt in teenagers' diets by as little as one-half teaspoon, or three grams, a day, could reduce the number of young adults with high blood pressure by 44 to 63 percent, according to new research presented Sunday, Nov. ...
Solar & Wind Energy <b>News</b> of the Last Week (or So) – CleanTechnica <b>...</b>
CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views's authors are supported by a revenue-sharing agreement with the company that operates CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views, Important Media. Of course, it's never enough ...
bench craft company reviews
Newly 25-year-old Lauren Conrad has spent much of the last few months being trailed by cameras for her next reality project with MTV. Unfortunately, it was confirmed by EW today that the network is not going ahead with the project. MTV's Head of Programming David Janollari commented on the cancellation and said, "We decided not to go ahead with the show. She did do a pilot. There were talks about whether we could somehow manage to put together a special based on that footage but that's also a big question mark based on her interest in that and the finances. We love her! We would love her on our network!" It seems as though they're open to a collaboration in the future, but for now, fans will have to get their LC fix through fashion and books.
Lauren released a statement about the news saying, "We sold a show to MTV, filmed it and are really proud of the final result. MTV felt the subject matter was too high brow for their audience and offered me the opportunity to change the show by incorporating more of my personal life. We agreed going into the project that this show would be an aspirational one, focusing on my career and my goals and not my personal relationships. We delivered the show that we sold and are sorry MTV didn't feel their viewers were savvy enough to appreciate it."
So, tell us — are you sad Lauren's reality series isn't happening?
LaunchBox Digital, a VC firm specializing in angel, seed, and early stage investments, just wrapped up its third annual 12-week startup mentoring program. Similar to Y Combinator and TechStars, LaunchBox invests seed capital of $20,000 into startup teams and provides them with 12 weeks of education, mentorship, and access to advisers. The following 7 LaunchBox10 companies are graduating from this year’s program and will be going live as part of LaunchBox Demo Day, where the companies will present their businesses to potential investors and strategic partners.
Without further ado, here are the graduates:
CityPockets (Crunchbase profile): Today, we live in the world of the Groupon clone, and thanks to the Google-shunning colossus, “daily deal” websites now litter the Web. These sites have been a big hit among mom and pop shops and small businesses because they can be such an effective way to attract new, local customers. The problem for these merchants, however, has been converting new customers into loyal, repeat visitors. According to LaunchBox, less than 15% of “deal jumpers” return to the same merchant again without another deal offer. On the whole, these merchants struggle to retain the influx of new customers, failing to take the steps to establish that critical, lasting relationship with the consumer.
CityPockets.com is a real-time, self-serve merchant CRM platform that aims to address customer retention issues by allowing merchants to more easily capture user contact info and to offer repeat discounts. In addition, the platform empowers merchants to manage gaps in supply and demand by sending out time-sensitive, limited-quantity offers whenever it makes sense for their businesses. Customers opt-in to follow their favorite merchants via CityPockets’ web and mobile apps.
Businesses interested in being part of the CityPockets Merchant Network can sign up here, and Daily Deal users can sign up at CityPockets.com to access and keep track of all voucher purchases from across popular Daily Deal sites on a single platform, and eventually receive more offers from relevant merchants of their choice.
FiscalPie (Crunchbase profile): FiscalPie breaks down the barrier between personal finance and social networks by providing users with Facebook applications that enable users to compare their finances with others and, in turn, learn how to make more educated financial decisions. One such FiscalPie application, “Retire Where?” shows you which cities you’ll be able to afford in retirement and allows you to compare your it with the future location of your friends.
FiscalPie works to make the myriad sources of financial information on the Web more reflective of your own specific circumstances—while keeping your information private —by creating an anonymous network of people that share similar financial profiles. Until the individual truly becomes part of the conversation, financial information has little significance. FiscalPie is hoping to start that dialog—socially.
HEALTHeME (Crunchbase profile): HEALTHeME delivers treatments that empower those struggling with weight, stress, and mood issues to better manage their health via the web and their mobile phone. The HEALTHeME platform combines clinical treatments and artificial intelligence to create customized behavior modification plans based on users’ lifestyles, health goals, and personality type. HEALTHeME then leverages real-time coaching, social networks and user’s healthcare providers to offer a truly personalized user experience. Would love to see an app for this, too.
Keona Health (Crunchbase profile): Keona Health is a company that optimizes admissions for primary care providers, increasing both productivity and cost savings. Keona’s Patient Decision Support system empowers patients with instant, personalized advice that aims to resolve up to 10% of patient cases at home. Triage nurses review each case, but with the goal of being 5 times faster and with more comprehensive safety checks than before. As a result of the greater emphasis on in-home consultation, when patients need to travel into the office to see a doctor, they should find reduced delays and wait times.
Keona has partnered with UNC and Duke to develop a decision engine that has already analyzed over 1,000 real medical records, and UNC Campus Health Services is acting as Keona’s first beta customer. During 2011, Keona Health plans to expand to several additional universities.
Leaguescape (Crunchbase profile): Leaguescape is a new platform for fantasy sports that combines social gaming and betting and allows you to collect all your fantasy sports leagues in one place. Like the Pokerstars or Full Tilt Poker of fantasy sports, Leaguescape allows fantasy sports enthusiasts to manage and bet on their season leagues and get their daily fix of fantasy sports with a variety of game offerings that enable users to draft, watch, and win on a daily basis.
Drawing on the online poker model, Leaguescape provides all things a fantasy sports bettor could need, including a variety of gaming types, rewards, and promotions.
Slipstream (Crunchbase profile): The likelihood is that your Twitter stream is an unfavorable mix of a few things you care about and a lot you don’t. You don’t want to miss out on important news and events, but you don’t have time to read everything. Slipstream wants to rid your stream of irrelevant Tweets.
Today, Slipstream launched its third prototype, a Chrome extension that lets you hide tweets on Twitter.com. It works seamlessly to help you get rid of things like Foursquare checkins, paper.li mentions, or when people you’re following start live-tweeting events. Gonezo. Simply click the “Hide” link that Slipstream adds to the end of every tweet and begin filtering your stream. It’s that easy.
Spring Metrics (Crunchbase profile): Spring Metrics helps you grow your online business by providing a deeper understanding of your customers and how they interact with your website. Spring Metrics seeks to make complex web analytics more friendly and digestible for marketers and e-commerce professionals who don’t want to wrestle with the complexity of traditional analytics products.
With an easy-to-use interface that requires no coding knowledge, Spring Metrics eliminates the hassle of creating conversion funnels and goals. The company’s real-time dashboard offers an array of conversion-oriented metrics, and the “Insight Engine” unearths actionable patterns in the data—patterns aimed at helping turn more visitors into paying customers.
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benchcraft company portland or
<b>News</b> Corp. exec: “The right time” to sell Myspace | VentureBeat
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining ...
Reducing salt in teen diet could have big impact on future health <b>...</b>
Cutting back on salt in teenagers' diets by as little as one-half teaspoon, or three grams, a day, could reduce the number of young adults with high blood pressure by 44 to 63 percent, according to new research presented Sunday, Nov. ...
Solar & Wind Energy <b>News</b> of the Last Week (or So) – CleanTechnica <b>...</b>
CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views's authors are supported by a revenue-sharing agreement with the company that operates CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views, Important Media. Of course, it's never enough ...
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benchcraft company portland or
<b>News</b> Corp. exec: “The right time” to sell Myspace | VentureBeat
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining ...
Reducing salt in teen diet could have big impact on future health <b>...</b>
Cutting back on salt in teenagers' diets by as little as one-half teaspoon, or three grams, a day, could reduce the number of young adults with high blood pressure by 44 to 63 percent, according to new research presented Sunday, Nov. ...
Solar & Wind Energy <b>News</b> of the Last Week (or So) – CleanTechnica <b>...</b>
CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views's authors are supported by a revenue-sharing agreement with the company that operates CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views, Important Media. Of course, it's never enough ...
benchcraft company scam
<b>News</b> Corp. exec: “The right time” to sell Myspace | VentureBeat
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining ...
Reducing salt in teen diet could have big impact on future health <b>...</b>
Cutting back on salt in teenagers' diets by as little as one-half teaspoon, or three grams, a day, could reduce the number of young adults with high blood pressure by 44 to 63 percent, according to new research presented Sunday, Nov. ...
Solar & Wind Energy <b>News</b> of the Last Week (or So) – CleanTechnica <b>...</b>
CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views's authors are supported by a revenue-sharing agreement with the company that operates CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views, Important Media. Of course, it's never enough ...
bench craft company reviews
<b>News</b> Corp. exec: “The right time” to sell Myspace | VentureBeat
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining ...
Reducing salt in teen diet could have big impact on future health <b>...</b>
Cutting back on salt in teenagers' diets by as little as one-half teaspoon, or three grams, a day, could reduce the number of young adults with high blood pressure by 44 to 63 percent, according to new research presented Sunday, Nov. ...
Solar & Wind Energy <b>News</b> of the Last Week (or So) – CleanTechnica <b>...</b>
CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views's authors are supported by a revenue-sharing agreement with the company that operates CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views, Important Media. Of course, it's never enough ...
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benchcraft company portland or
<b>News</b> Corp. exec: “The right time” to sell Myspace | VentureBeat
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining ...
Reducing salt in teen diet could have big impact on future health <b>...</b>
Cutting back on salt in teenagers' diets by as little as one-half teaspoon, or three grams, a day, could reduce the number of young adults with high blood pressure by 44 to 63 percent, according to new research presented Sunday, Nov. ...
Solar & Wind Energy <b>News</b> of the Last Week (or So) – CleanTechnica <b>...</b>
CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views's authors are supported by a revenue-sharing agreement with the company that operates CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views, Important Media. Of course, it's never enough ...
benchcraft company portland or
There are so many articles and blogs addressing the problems of the management of personal finances and provision for retirement, particularly for those living in difficult circumstances such as on a single income, through loss of job, health problems etc.
In regard to investment for retirement, there must be three keys:
decisions on your financial needs for retirement
your changing ability, over a lifetime, to meet those needs; and
the particular choices to be made regarding actual investment for retirement
Nearly all the advice in these types of articles concentrates on the different types and mixes of investments that might be appropriate.
More important perhaps, is the need for basic personal financial management to determine as time goes on, how much is available for investment for retirement; and the lifestyle changes that might be appropriate if these amounts are deemed insufficient.
Most financial management articles concentrate on potential changes to expenditure, all with a view to achieving a better overall balance between the increases and decreases. The only problem with this approach, so far as it goes, is that it is always difficult to keep track of the effects of each change and to be aware of how much of a difference each change makes in the bigger picture. The other thing is what is the best balance? How do you know if all the different aspects of financial responsibility are receiving the proper attention they deserve, not only now, but on a continuing, lifetime basis?
The answer surely is a more systematic approach. What we actually talking about is managing and controlling finances - of a particular type - our domestic or personal finances.
We all probably know that in business, the only way, indeed the legally required way, to manage finances is by the use of accounting. Accounting has evolved over hundreds of years with national and international supervisory authorities ensuring that it best meets the needs of the many different forms of business in place throughout the world.
Surely I am not suggesting that we should all start using accounting for managing home finances? Isn't it much too difficult and time consuming; and help - I do not understand all the terms and techniques!
Well, yes, I am suggesting that we all start to use accounting for managing and controlling our finances, but not quite the sort of accounting that businesses use. The reason is that with appropriate modifications, domestic accounting can be made easy to understand, implement and use. Most important, it can actually produce the information we really need to manage and control our finances, on a continuing basis.
Now well retired, I decided to start using accounting along time ago to manage my own finances. I had learnt a little about accounting through a business correspondence course and much later, decided to try using it for my personal finances. I bought an off-the-shelf accounting package and set to work. I soon realised that it was all very difficult to do and that it didn't actually help very much once I got it set-up. The problem was that the focus was all wrong and the reports didn't relate to day-to-day personal financial transactions.
The business accounting focus, understandably, is all about profits and owner's or shareholder's value. The reports such as the Trading account and Profit & Loss account are designed to track and help maximise these values. Most personal accounting packages are based on business accounting with the problems I encountered, or only address simple features (all very useful as far as they go) such as bank statement reconciliation or budget lists.
Over many years, I evolved a new domestic accounting model. By this, I mean the set of reports and individual accounts needed to implement this new form of accounting, all with a new focus on what I called, Domestic Well-Being (DWB).
As a model, the method is capable of being implemented on off-the shelf personal accounting software packages on a home PC. I initially used the well known Microsoft Money© software package but now prefer a package called Personal Accountz©. The differences relate to alternative accounting architectures embodied in these two products - categorisation versus 'nominal' accounts - one account for each expense category.
DWB Accounting is all about maximising the effect or balance of the decreases compared to the increases, in a way that ensures that appropriate emphasis is given to all of the different categories of each, corresponding to the nature of the financial transactions that characterize domestic life.
What this means is that we have a pre-defined DWB structure for domestic change (the increases and decreases) that goes into successively more detail down this hierarchical structure. From the top level of Basics, Discretionary and Others, the Basics are categorised at the next level in terms of Essentials, Responsibilities and Family Circumstances. Discretionary is sub-categorised as Nice-to-Have, Investment for the Future and Luxuries. At a lower level, Essentials include Utilities, Food and Drink, Clothing, Health and Transport, whilst Nice-to-Have includes Vacation, Leisure and Entertainment, Hobbies, Charities and Timeshare, Mobile home and Caravan, with more and more detail as needed, at successive lower levels.
The model facilitates the bookkeeping which is the means (using individual accounts and/or categories) to enter transactions from bank statements and credit card statements to match the DWB structure; often semi-automated, this typically takes only a couple of hours a month which is trivial compared to the benefits available. Other techniques include naming conventions for the accounts to make it all easy to understand what is going on, in terms of what I call, the Domestic Accounting Equation.
The main tool or benefit of the model is the Domestic Well-Being Statement (DWBS) which is a structured report showing from high, medium to low sub-category levels, the amounts of increases and decreases over any period - a week, month, quarter, year or whatever. From a management and control perspective, at the top level, you can see the proportions of total expenditure between the Basics, Nice-to-Have and Others. A first question is 'are these proportions about right'? At a more detailed level, if the Basics are considered too high, you can then see at progressively lower levels in any of the areas, where there might be scope for planned reductions or increases in certain sub-categories, over future periods. It is all about searching for and achieving the best balance across the out-goings!
Of particular interest in this context is Investment for the Future (IFF); are the amounts sufficient and more important if they are not, where is the scope for increasing this amount? Where are the imbalances and which other subcategory amounts are potentially ripe for change?
The key is visibility. Suddenly, everything is exposed. You can see whether appropriate amounts are being put aside for the future; you can see where dangers might be lurking with potential debt problems; and for those with some existing debt, the management of its reduction is much easier to plan and execute.
Budgeting can set up to plan future expenditure with warnings triggered if spending over the next period approaches pre-set levels in whatever categories or sub-categories are being watched.
For the more adventurous, the model includes new domestic financial ratios for additional control capabilities, as well as numerous graphical displays (a picture speaks a thousand words!).
With a best possible financial balance achieved through maximizing Domestic Well-Being, provision for retirement will be at the fore. Decisions can be made on how best to provide the appropriate amounts for retirement investments and if necessary, change other lifestyle priorities to ensure that the required amounts are made available. Advice will still be needed on the choices and tailoring of investment plans but that is specialized and different from the basic personal financial management required to provide a rock-steady platform for all other financial decisions throughout life.
In the global financial turmoil today, everyone can take advantage of new ideas as a basis for starting to better manage and control their personal finances. DWB Accounting offers the potential for lifestyle improvements and goal achievement since good financial management can point to the need for many other initiatives such as job change, better qualifications, re-location and so on.
In summary, by using accounting for managing and controlling home and personal finances, based on the new Domestic Well-Being accounting model, you will always know in detail, the past and present state of your finances as a proper basis for comparison and control. You will be able to ensure that all aspects of your financial responsibilities are being met through achieving the best possible balance across all of your categories of increases and decreases, based on your own priorities and approach to indebtedness.
All that is demanded is an appropriate sense of responsibility from those in some form of family situation, be it a marriage or partnership, with or without children, or even just a single person. The sooner domestic accounting is underway, the greater the potential for lifetime and continuing benefit. It will take a few months to get things going and to accumulate sufficient figures to start seeing a meaningful basis for gaining and exercising control. Now is the time surely, to find out more about DWB Accounting.
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