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Is it time to make a money move?

September 25th, 2007 by monies

Do you lock up a CD now? Wait around to refinance? Drag your feet on a car loan?

Diane Swonk, chief economist for Mesirow Financial in Chicago, is predicting that the Fed will also cut rates by another quarter percentage point again at its Oct. 30-31 meetings.

The reasons to make a move: Housing stinks, the U.S. economy is hurting and the jobs picture is getting bleaker.

“There’s absolutely no reason in my view why they wouldn’t ease at this point,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.

com is also forecasting another rate cuts this year.

But if the Fed drops rates, consumers would get a break, too. The prime rate — a rate that influences credit cards, home equity lines of credit and other loans — would drop to 8 percent from 8.25 percent by next week, if the Fed cuts rates by 25 basis points. If we get a second similar cut in October, too, the prime would drop again to 7.75 percent.

“There is a light at the end of the tunnel — and it’s not a train,” Swonk said.

A round of rate cuts should make investors and lenders less skittish — and help the U.S. economy regain its footing.

As the Fed starts cutting rates now, the downside is that savers would make less money on deposits.

“The outlook for the Fed cutting interest rates does not bode well for CD rates in the coming months,” said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst for Bankrate.com.

The national average yield for a one-year CD was 3.75 percent last week compared with 3.78 percent in January and 3.89 percent a year ago.

Given that the rates are likely to move lower, McBride advises that savers might want to lock in some higher CD rates for one year or longer.

Some banks, such as LaSalle Bank, have CD specials for less than a year. LaSalle has a seven-month CD that has a yield of 4.65 percent for a minimum deposit of $2,000. The yield goes up to 5 percent if the saver has a minimum of $15,000 to put into the CD. It has to be new money to the bank.

As for buying a home? Refinancing? Or borrowing to buy a car?

Playing the rate game could be trickier.

Overall, Zandi notes that consumers would likely get better deals by waiting to borrow money. If you’re shopping for a home, Zandi said it could pay to be patient and wait until rates and home prices fall further.

If you’ve got an adjustable-rate mortgage, it might seem logical to wait to refinance until rates fall a bit more from here.

If you have an ARM that will reset and climb higher in the months ahead, you’d take on more risk by waiting.

Will home prices fall even further in the next few months, making it harder to refinance? Will you be out of a job in six months or so — again making it far harder to refinance? Will the mortgage reset and then make it harder for you to pay your bills on time? And will your credit score drop?

“It’s a gamble, and I’m not sure it’s a gamble that’s going to pay off,” McBride said. “If you start falling behind on the payments, the lenders are going to run the other way.”

So talk to the bank as early as possible anyway.

As for car loans?

The auto industry overall would benefit from any kind of rate cut. Lower rates, after all, make it easier for car companies to offer financing deals — and move product.

In general, though, interest rates on car loans aren’t likely to fall much with the first few rate cuts.

On a $25,000 car loan, for example, a quarter-point cut would produce a savings of about $3 a month, McBride said.

Instead of waiting, he said, consumers who want a car soon would be better off shopping for a good rate, a good deal — and cleaning up the car for a better trade-in price or used car sale.

Author: Susan Tompor Detroit Free Press

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What every budding author should know: crap books make lots of money

September 20th, 2007 by monies

The trend began with Crap Towns, which spawned Crap Jobs and Crap Cars before a spate of titles, often spoofs, incorporating shit or shite. An online sales surge this week sent Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?: The Encyclopaedia of Modern Life, by Alan McArthur and Steve Lowe, to the top of the Amazon charts.

The witty rant against contemporary culture has seen sales double in the past couple of weeks. It has already sold 16,000 copies since publication in October. Only Jeremy Clarkson is selling more in the humour section at Waterstone’s.

But an entire canon of shit, shite and crap titles is proving a goldmine. Michael O’Mara, chairman of Michael O’Mara Books, began the trend with Shite’s Miscellany, modelled on Ben Schott’s hugely successful miscellany. It has so far sold about 150,000 hardback copies and prompted follow- ups including Eats, Shites & Leaves by Antal Parody, a spoof of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Mr O’Mara said thaT the series began as a joke. ‘I thought the idea of doing a parody could be a lot of fun, though it never occurred to me as a hit book,’ he said. ‘It was written in-house and we just had a great laugh doing it. We were absolutely astonished when it became a bestseller. We had to do a follow-up and Eats, Shites & Leaves seemed utterly perfect. All of a sudden we were looking at one absolutely ludicrous brand that we’d invented based on a vulgar word.’

This summer, Shitedoku was published, followed by A Shite History of Nearly Everything, which Bookseller magazine said was ‘possibly more funny than the original’. Mr O’Mara had no qualms about using ’shite’ so liberally. ‘It’s a word I quite often use. And in the beginning, I thought [Shite’s Miscellany] would be a minor book so it didn’t matter a lot if the chains didn’t want to take it, but they all loved it. Parody is a lost art, but I think people like it.’

A spokeswoman for Macmillan, publishers of Crap Towns, which began as an article in The Idler magazine, said they ran the title past retailers to see their reaction. ‘I can’t imagine we would have been able to get away with it 10 years ago, but a bit of swearing doesn’t seem to be such a problem any more,’ she said. ‘It just seemed to sum up something you couldn’t achieve with any other term. Crap is a good word ” it suggests a bit rubbish but not the end of the world, which is exactly the tone of the book.’

There had been no complaints about the use of ‘crap’, although the Macmillan computer system initially tried to block all uses of the word. ‘I told the IT guy he’d have to take ‘crap’ off the firewall because I couldn’t do my job otherwise,’ she said.

Curiously, Rude Britain had been much more problematic, even though its subject matter was simply real but rude-sounding place names such as Minge Lane and Brown Willy.

Scott Pack, head buyer for Waterstone’s, said the titles seemed to appeal to a broad section of the public. ‘This is the third year of them. They have almost become a Christmas tradition, which is a bit of an odd tradition, I grant you. Every Christmas you look for what the next one is going to be and there is usually a spoof of a trend,’ he said.

As for their popularity: ‘With gift purchases in humour, it’s very much on impulse. If someone picks a book up and it makes them laugh it gets bought,’ he said.

LEADING ARTICLE, PAGE 40

Author: Louise Jury

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Cracking your nest egg - advice on saving for retirement - includes related article on how to make retirement money last

September 20th, 2007 by monies

You don’t see long lines of retirees queuing up for scarier-than-ever roller coasters that spring up every year at competing theme parks around the country–such as Worlds of Fun’s latest scream machine, in Kansas City, Mo. The Mamba takes riders 200 feet above the ground, then hurls them down at 75 miles an hour. That’s followed by a 184-foot ascent–and a 60-mph corkscrew.

Sounds sort of like that scary ride on Wall Street. Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index of big-company stocks rumbled up 22% in the first six and a half months of the year, then tumbled 10% in less than a month. The Russell 2000 collection of small stocks rose 20% between early January and the end of April, then plunged 18%.

Is it any wonder that people who are retired or close to it may be a bit queasy about the thought of strapping any part of their retirement nest egg onto that roller coaster?

But don’t step out of line.

Regardless of the market’s inevitable misbehaviors, the long-term nature of investing in retirement still means that a healthy–even heavy–investment in stocks is the key to preserving financial security for the rest of your life.

Maxie Nameth, 60, a corporate pilot living in Boynton Beach, Fla., is a true believer. Ever since he bought his first mutual fund shares 30 years ago, he has poured all of his savings into the stock market. His fidelity to stocks–and participation in every 401(k) plan he has been eligible for–has paid off. He and his wife, Teny, 58, have accumulated a nest egg of more than $900,000. And that’s after their stocks took a $70,000 beating this summer that pushed them below the million-dollar mark.
Bloodied but not bowed, Nameth saw the market drop as an opportunity to hunt for bargains. The years of experience and success have given him a quiet serenity about market stumbles. “Now if I was going to cash out tomorrow and spend it tomorrow, it’s a big deal,” says Nameth, reflecting on the loss. “But I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to use a lot of this money until I’m 70. I’ll just ride it out.”

At the same time, this push-the-envelope investor realized as he approached 60 last year that it was time to build a bit of protection into his portfolio. That’s when he began to switch part of his investments into bonds, according to the plan he devised with financial planner Neal Slafsky of Fort Lauderdale. But not too big a chunk. For Nameth, the goal of having about 25% in bonds is pretty conservative. “You can’t get conservative too early,” he says.

Experts agree wholeheartedly. In the past, conventional wisdom suggested that retirees follow two basic precepts: Switch your investments from stocks to safe, income-producing securities, such as bonds and CDs, and never spend your principal. Baloney. Today, for many retirees, especially younger ones, following either dictum could lead to financial calamity.

The new reality is that retirement is getting longer, perhaps 30 or 40 years or more, as more people retire earlier and lifespans steadily increase. Over such a long period, running from the possibility of stock-market risk by investing in fixed-income securities guarantees that you’ll run straight into the risk of inflation.

“Inflation is your enemy, even if it’s not hyperinflation,” warns financial planner Deena Katz of Coral Gables, Fla. If, for example, prices rose at a rate of 3% a year, the cost of living would double in 24 years; at 5%, it would take only 14 years.

How much do you need?

A key to making your money last is knowing how long it has to last–a guesstimate, at best. A 65-year-old man today has a life expectancy of about 16 years, according to government tables, and a 65-year-old woman, about 19 years. But these are average figures. Lots of people live longer, which explains why retired Boulder, Colo., financial planner Michael Stein, author of The Prosperous Retirement: Guide to the New Reality (Emstco Press, $19.95), suggests adding 50% to average life expectancies as a margin of safety. Rozanna Patane, a York Harbor, Me,, planner, figures her clients will live to age 100. “People used to laugh at me,” she says, “but now more are starting to wonder whether that is enough.”

By the time you hit retirement, you should have a pretty good handle on how much money it takes to live the way you like. Nameth figures he and Teny will do fine on about 80% of preretirement income, but the old rule of thumb that retirees can live on 70% to 80% of preretirement income doesn’t work for everybody.

Retirement spending, especially in the early years when you’re active and healthy, often pushes a budget above preretirement levels. Travel expenses may go up. Medical-insurance costs may soar if you retire when you are too young for medicare and you have no employer-provided retiree health benefit.

Author: Ronaleen R. Roha

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Eureka!: This little-Ranch-that-could teaches you to “win more, lose less, and make more money” - Creative problem solving

September 19th, 2007 by monies

It’s hard to describe exactly what happens at the Eureka Ranch house, which is a large red building located on 80 acres of land just outside of Cincinnati. Before you arrive, you’d heard that the grounds encompass a sand volleyball court, a lake for water sports, a three-hole golf course, and other recreation facilities. But as you drive there, you pass industrial parks instead of the bucolic, sprawling vistas you expected. No matter, the Ranch is set back from the road in a world unto itself. But before you get any closer, some background.

The Ranch, founded in 1997 by Doug Hall, entrepreneur and former Proctor & Gamble “Master Marketing Inventor,” is part creativity institute, part training center; part amusement park, part laboratory. The Ranch’s training program was named by Human Resource Executive as one of the top 10 training products of 2000, and 85 percent of participants rate the program as the best training they’ve ever attended.

The stated mission of the Eureka Ranch is to “help our friends, old and new, think smarter and more creatively about how to grow their business.” The services include

* sessions that teach the Ranch’s principles of Marketing Physics and Capitalist Creativity

* inventing sessions, in which a team of “Trained Brains” helps companies generate customized ideas for new products, marketing efforts, or business strategies

* a marketplace simulation, “artificial wisdom” tool that calculates the probability of success for your idea and coaches you on how to increase its odds.

What all of those services have in common is the statement that launches the introduction in Hall’s new book, Jump Start Your Business Brain:

“I bring you good news. Business success is not random…. There are reproducible scientific lessons and laws that, when applied with diligence, can help you win more, lose less, and make more money….” It’s that absolute obsession for scientific principles and hard data that makes him perhaps different from other creativity gurus.

During 10 years of inventing sessions with such big-name clients as Pepsi-Cola, Nike, and Walt Disney, the Ranch’s parent company collected data through extensive research and development. Groups that came to generate ideas for their business were guinea pigs: Ranch staff gathered quantitative and qualitative data and generated detailed analyses following the teachings of statistician W. Edwards Deming.

That information is now being used to benefit companies that can’t afford the up to US$150,000 price tag for an inventing session. The training teaches the six laws driving creativity that were extrapolated from the Ranch’s research, backed up by plenty of figures and formulas overseen by two Ranch employees with mathematics Ph.Ds.

This borrowing from the rich to benefit the not-so-rich is why a Canadian television station recently called Hall “a corporate Robin Hood.” The more moderately priced sessions enable small businesses and individuals to learn the Ranch’s secrets to success, as does Hall’s recently released third book on principles that work with small enterprises. Many of the examples and case studies in that book were generated as he offered services for free or at reduced prices to small businesses.

The third branch of Ranch services, the artificial wisdom program Merwyn (which shares its name with both Hall’s father and Hall’s boyhood magician persona), is available to people with money to burn as well as people with empty pockets. Those who can afford it can use the simulated test marketing and coaching to refine a concept or evaluate a fully formed concept’s name, pricing, and competition. For those short of cash, the Ranch is offering one trial of the idea-refining service free with each purchase of Jump Start Your Business Brain.

Merwyn, described by Hall as a thinking system that will empower white-collar workers the same way mechanical tools empowered blue-collar workers, cost US$20 million to develop over six years. The system tracks real-world customer behavior and was validated by following the success rates of 900 real, new products over five years. The average success rates the system predicted were within one or two percentage points of the actual figures. As Hall describes it, Merwyn is “basically a giant bookie that sets the odds.” But it’s also an awesome creativity tool, he adds, because it gives you a laboratory in which to experiment with thought.

Home, home on the Ranch

Author: Eva Kaplan-Leiserson

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Cameron: money and celebrity won’t make you happy

September 18th, 2007 by monies

Political Editor

Rampant material consumption, boosted by images of celebrities flaunting their wealth, is having “detrimental psychological effects” on people and making them unhappy, a policy document by the Conservative Party will warn this week.

The report by the Quality of Life policy group, headed by John Gummer and Zac Goldsmith, will warn that British society has “a preoccupation with materialism” which has led to “status anxiety” among people desperate to keep up.

In the radical paper that confronts the spirit of Thatcherism, the Tories will argue there is a “darker side of wealth”, observing that naturally acquisitive people often tend to be dissatisfied and unhappy.

The policy group will warn that Britain has contracted “affluenza” and that the national obsession with acquiring possessions is causing widespread personnel discontent.

It will call for an end to the “hedonistic treadmill where individuals can never be satisfied”, suggesting that GDP, the traditional indicator of prosperity, should be replaced by a new set of indicators that measure social well-being as well as wealth.

Although the average person in Britain has never had so much disposable income, the country is in “social recession”, the paper observes, with two million on antidepressants and a million more taking class A drugs.

The proposals, to be published by David Cameron, are expected to urge people to pursue a “slower” lifestyle that may involve a cut in salary and flexible working.

In a departure from Conservative orthodoxy it will say that the market is no more than a tool. “Treating it as a god and doing its bidding does not make men and women happy.”

In what will be seen as an attack on the “cricket and warm beer” ethos of the John Major era, the paper will say that the “good old days were thoroughly miserable for many people”.

The paper, which will form the basis of the Tories’ environment policy, is also expected to recommend more exacting targets to cut carbon emissions.

It is expected to stop short of endorsing nuclear power as the answer to cutting carbon emissions, while recommending radical proposals for getting people to fly less and use more environmentally friendly forms of transport.

Jules Peck, director of the Quality of Life group, said the group was “rethinking the whole way we look at the world.”

girls suffer ’superwoman’ syndrome page 19

Author: Array

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They make you money and then they take a slice

September 5th, 2007 by monies

Investors are often not given the full picture about something that can wipe hundreds of pounds from their returns ” the true overall cost of managing their cash inside an equity individual savings account (ISA) or unit trust.

When trying to sell you funds, many salesmen and independent financial advisers (IFAs) usually just refer to an annual management charge (AMC). This is what you pay the manager to select stocks each year and make you money, and is separate from the one-off ‘upfront’ charge levied when you first invest.

It can be as little as 0.1 per cent of your investment if you choose a tracker fund, which relies on computers simply to follow the movements of an index like the FTSE 100.

Or it can be as high as 1.75 per cent for an ‘actively managed’ fund where humans use their expertise to try to ’shoot the lights’ out for performance.

So far, so simple. With the average AMC hovering around 1.3 per cent and assuming neither a gain nor a loss, a fund manager would charge pounds 13 to run your pounds 1,000 for one year.

But the expenses don’t end there, for all funds incur a raft of ‘hidden annual costs’, in the words of Justin Modray of IFA Bestinvest. ‘They include fees for legal work, share custody, trustee documents, auditing and administration.’ And these can add up to an alarmingly high total ” in the worst cases, more than double the AMC itself (see the table above).

Fund managers have largely been unwilling to advertise this higher overall cost since it makes more of a dent in your returns. But the total expense ratio (TER), as it is known, is the figure you should ask the salesman or adviser about because it provides a much more reliable benchmark when comparing funds.

A lower TER indicates better, and more competitive, cost management.

‘You should always look at the TER rather than the annual management charge ” it’s the bottom line,’ says Mr Modray.

If you’re very lucky, the fund management firm will meet some of these extra costs but, in most cases, the company pays none at all. That leaves the investor footing the bill.

Say you invest pounds 1,000 in a fund that grows in size by 7 per cent a year. It has an AMC of 1 per cent but a TER of 3 per cent.

After 10 years, your investment would be worth pounds 1,791 if all you were paying was the AMC, according to research from Bestinvest. But tot up all the other costs to reach the TER, and you’d only have pounds 1,480 ” pounds 311 less.

‘Fund managers haven’t wanted to show these higher costs [since] it puts

them in a bad light,’ says Mr Modray.

However, things are about to change. From tomorrow, fund companies will, for the first time, have to inform you of this total cost of investing instead of just highlighting the AMC. They have been forced into doing so by a European directive that aims to make it easier for consumers to buy and sell funds. The TER must now appear in sales literature, usually known as a ‘Key Features’ document, that is shown to you before you decide to invest your hard- earned cash.

‘The arrival of the TER is great for ordinary investors as it’s more transparent,’ says Ben Yearsley of IFA Hargreaves Lansdown. Costs will come down because, with investors able to see more clearly what different firms charge, fund managers will have to be more competitive, he says.

As a guide to value, the average TER for an equity fund that actively manages your cash is 1.57, according to Fitzrovia, a fund research company.

For investment trusts ” rival savings vehicles ” it is 1.25 per cent.

Bestinvest calculates that, for an index tracker, the average TER is around 0.35 per cent.

In particular, the new rules are expected to hit multi-manager funds that invest your cash in other funds ” at an extra cost ” adds Patrick Connolly of IFA John Scott & Partners. ‘Their AMC is often 1.5 per cent but, with the new TER rules, their published costs will be much higher.’

Although fees are a key factor to check, they’re only part of the story.

‘Cheapest is not always best,’ says Mr Modray. ‘Over the last 10 years, Fidelity Special Situations [TER 1.67 per cent] has turned pounds 1,000 into pounds 4,620. The F&C FTSE All Share tracker (TER 0.35 per cent) has returned pounds 2,000.’

If you don’t use an IFA, make sure you scrutinise every element ” risk, past performance, overall fees ” before making your choice on what fund to buy.

HOW THE CHARGES ADD UP

Overall annual costs of equity funds

Fund Annual Other TER

charge% charges % %

SVM UK 1.25 3.02 4.27

100 Select

Framlington 1.75 1.39 3.14

Netnet

Jupiter 1.5 0.26 1.76

Income

Liontrust 0.3 0.1 0.4

Top 100

Fidelity 0.1 0.2 0.3

Moneybuilder

UK Index

Source: Bestinvest

Author: Sam Dunn

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10 ways to make friends with your money

September 5th, 2007 by monies

— Determine where you are at the moment. Make a list of what you own (assets) and what you owe (liabilities), which combine to determine your net worth. Then figure your monthly income (after taxes). List your expenses. Your net income should be greater than your expenses.

— Set attainable goals. Share your goals with friends or family. Ask them to hold you accountable, and set firm dates for them to check back with you.

— Pay attention to your money choices. When you’re faced with a buying opportunity, ask if the item is something you really want or need, because you’re giving up an opportunity to pay down credit card debt, save for retirement or put away money for your kids’ college. Instead of incurring debt, put money away for the things you really want.

— Manage your money on paper, not in your head. Write it down.

— Stay out of debt, except for mortgages. Eliminate credit card debt, late charges and bank fees.

— Pay bills in full, on time.

— Put yourself first.

— Do not underestimate the amount of money you will need for retirement. You can never put away too much.

— Let the experts help you. Shop around, interview bankers, insurance professionals and others to make sure they fit your needs and share your goals.

Author: Array

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Do you want to make some money? Yes–is that your final answer?

September 4th, 2007 by monies

Not only can you make some money from special events, prize indemnification, holein-one, and weather coverage, it can also be exiting and fun to do so. There probably isn’t any promotion that a client can conceive of that cannot be insured by one of the markets listed following this feature.

Special events take place every day in every city Coverage can consist of primary liability (including or excluding participant’s liability), excess liability inland marine, property, auto, liquor liability, and workers compensation.

But what if it rains the day of the event and the sponsor of the event suffers a financial loss? Are prizes being given away if certain “feats of skill” are accomplished? What if the main attraction doesn’t show?

Weather insurance, event cancellation, prize indemnification, and non-appearance can answer all of these questions and more.

The opportunities for placing coverage are increasing. Lauren Roberson, vice president of CGA (Charitable Golf Association) in Mishawaka, Indiana, says: “The special events market has grown by leaps and bounds. Same examples are the number of `Millionaire’ shows airing on television and the number of Web sites that exist for lotteries and million-dollar promotions. These are the wave of the future.” CGA provides coverage for hole-in-one, fishing contests, sports events, scratch cards, weather, direct mail, over-redemption, and Internet promotions in all states and some international areas.

When a promotion is too successful

SCA Promotions and SCA Insurance Specialist offers two of the more interesting programs-the telecard and over-redemption. Susan Hatfield, marketing director, explains, “The telecard helps retailers generate traffic with refund checks, discount programs and rebate offers that include a phone card.”

Some programs have included Tia Rosa Tortillas/Mrs. Baird’s Bread where, in order to attract tortilla eaters, one million 5- or 15-minute pre-paid phone cards were inserted into 20-count packages of tortillas. The 15-minute cards offered international access to Mexico. The over-redemption concept will prevent unexpected promotional costs. It covers the cost of excess redemption. should your promotion become too successful. In a 1993 promotion, a British vacuum cleaner company offered free round trips from the U K. to the United States for customers who plunked down between $80 and $150 for its product. Good news-record sales. Bad news-the cost of the airfares resulted in a $36 million loss.

SCA has offered packages for prize promotions in the United States since 1986; but as you can see, this has international market potential. SCA formed a new joint venture with Europe’s largest agency specializing in sports marketing, promotion, and sponsorships. ISPR, mbH (Internationale Sportrechte Verwertungsgesellschaft) based in Munich, Germany, with PanEuropean clients, and SCA combined to form Sales Promotions & Solutions (SYS, GmbH & Co. KG.) SCA also has a majority shareholder stake in Euro Promotions, based in Stockholm, and recently acquired the United Kingdom’s largest sales brokerage firm, PIMS, Ltd. They also have formed alliances in South America, Mexico, Canada, Greece, and Spain.

“Weather” or not

If it indeed does rain mainly on the “plains in Spain” or not in “Indianapolis in the summertime,” your client can protect against too much or not enough weather. Lack of snow can put a ski lodge out of business, and too much rain can cancel your parade.

Retailers also have utilized weather in sales promotions. For example, your jewelry store purchase will be free if you buy within a certain window of time, and an accumulation of snow of so many inches occurs on a predetermined date. When weather promotions are being set in place, the location of measurement is critical. Most promoters use the Weather Bureau-usually located at the airport, which sometimes is 25 miles or more from the retailer’s place of business.

All rules should be clear so that you, the agent, won’t receive the publicity for not paying off on the prize. In the case of events of one day or more, you may not need to have coverage on a 24-hour basis. The peak time may be 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and it may need to rain more than one-fourth of an inch to cause financial loss. Lauralee Tillman, president of Good Weather Insurance Agency, states: “Because of the time specifics of the event, being able to have a financial guarantee of the weather is extremely important. It gives the event coordinator a degree of control over the most uncontrollable element. Both indoor and outdoor events have a financial susceptibility to the weather.” Good Weather offers coverage in the United States and Canada.

“Driving” for dollars

Author: France, Larry

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How to make money out of the melting pot

September 4th, 2007 by monies

Mehta, a trained accountant, had no work permit. But more than anything he wanted to get back behind the desk.

Firms did not want to take me in, he says, looking back on some tough times. They didn’t want to sponsor me.

Luckily, a friend took the trouble to forward his resume to the Garden City-based accounting firm of Margolin Winer & Evens. The Long Islanders liked what they saw and decided to sponsor him.

It was a very good break for me, Mehta says.

He’s now a senior accountant at a prestigious regional firm. And at 27, he can foresee a great future. Diversity experts say that’s exactly the point.

With a shortage of talent in the industry, individuals are grateful that employers take the time and trouble to do things like secure visas for potentially valuable employees. That’s the view of Robert Micera, director of human resources at Mehta’s employer. You just built some loyalty.

Loyalty and retention are just the starters. Other perks for companies embracing diversity include the tapping of new talent pools and skill sets, plus the often-overlooked factor that the diversity of a new employee actually could help his boss tap entirely new markets. As MWE partner Craig Savell puts it, clients appreciate working with a staffer who knows their language and culture.

On Long Island, diversity efforts are vital, especially as the region’s population grows more diverse. The latest Census figures show a surge in the minority population between 2000 and 2004. The Long Island Hispanic community has grown by nearly 17 percent, Asian by 37 percent, and black by 4.4 percent.

To get in tune with these changes, the private sector is making changes:

VENDORS: Nowadays many major corporations are prompted to ask their vendors how diverse their own workforces are, points out Joseph Ortego, a partner at Nixon Peabody who serves on the Garden City law firm’s diversity committee. What’s more, they even want to know about the promotion rate of the company’s minority workers, including its attorneys and support staff. Ortega notes that when they send out requests for proposals, right up front they ask the question: What is your diversity?

RECRUITING: To gain an edge, smart firms such as Nixon Peabody look for job candidates through such organizations as the National Bar Association, a network of African American professionals in the legal field, and the Hispanic National Bar Association. At Margolin Winer & Evens, they like to find their candidates at colleges all over the metropolitan area and upstate New York that are known for having diverse student bodies.

ACCLIMATING: It’s equally important to welcome these staffers into the firm, especially as Long Island is ranked the third most segregated suburban region in the nation, as noted in the Long Island Index 2005, a report sponsored by the Rauch Foundation of Garden City. And a continuing focus on training and development fosters employee loyalty.

PERSONALIZING: For all employees, the scheduling of assignments can be tricky. But as part of a company’s diversity efforts, Micera says that it must be aware of employees’ special needs. A woman, for instance, may be working a flextime schedule, so the firm must figure how to balance her personal goals while still serving their clients. It’s a challenge, he says, but nothing that can’t be worked out with ongoing programs.

All these efforts must be seen as normal part of doing business, emphasizes Nixon Peabody. The firm makes a real effort to mentor its minority members to guarantee them every opportunity to excel.

Author: Adina Genn

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Your Money: SAVE pounds 3bn ..MAKE A SCAM SCRAM

September 3rd, 2007 by monies

These shock figures have prompted the Office of Fair Trading to nominate February as “Scams Awareness Month” to highlight some of the ploys. Spokesman Mike Haley said: “Scammers are finding more ruthless and sophisticated ways to prey on people’s hopes and fears, and are exploiting modern tools like the internet, email and texting.

“These cons lead to debt, depression, and even suicide. Though anybody can be conned, it is the vulnerable, the oldest or youngest, who suffer most.”

Here we outline five common scams… and tell you how to beat them.

‘CLAIRVOYANTS’ pounds 40m

A NEW and nasty scam when an email, usually personalised, offers predictions for an up-front payment. They often hint of terrible events over the horizon and are designed to scare people into asking for more details. Of the known victims so far, 70 per cent are women. Nearly 200,000 victims have paid pounds 40million a year to criminals running these scams.

FOREIGN LOTTERY pounds 260m

A LETTER, call or email says you have won a top prize thanks to automatic entry in a lottery abroad - even though you never bought a ticket. The letter asks you to send money for admin costs. Once you send your money, that’s the last you’ll hear - you certainly won’t receive any winnings. Around 140,000 victims are believed to have lost pounds 260million.

SIMILAR to a foreign lottery scam, a letter, email or call tells you to come and collect a prize for something you never entered. If you turn up you are pressured to join an “exclusive” club for a free holiday. Later you find it does not include “extras” like expensive flights. The average sum lost is pounds 3,000 and 400,000 people have been conned out of pounds 1.17billion.

SWEEPSTAKES pounds 80m

YOU are notified of a large win in a sweepstake or draw, asked to pay fees to get the cash, but the prize never turns up - 380,000 people lose pounds 60million every year this way. Or you “win” a prize which you have to claim with a long call to an 090 number costing up to pounds 1.50 a minute. More than a million people are scammed each year and lose an average of pounds 80 each.

MIRACLE CURES pounds 20m

A LETTER tells you of a cure for a common problem you’ve suffered for years, from baldness to impotence or even cancer. Or the new wonder drug can make you miraculously thin without dieting. Around 200,000 people spend up to pounds 1,000 each on these products, even though they might even cause them harm. They’ve lost a total of pounds 20million.

HOW TO BEAT CONS

KEEP all documents and keep records of phone calls and correspondence. Remember, if you win anything you should NOT have to pay anything to get your prize, not even the cost of a call. Never send money to anyone you don’t know, however plausible they sound. If you fall victim to a fraud, call Consumer Direct on 0845 4040506.

Author: MELANIE WRIGHT

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Your Money: SAVE pounds 3bn ..MAKE A SCAM SCRAM