Idea Man » Finance

Stock Proxies – Is this legal?

ideaman — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 20:38:22 +0000

Before I mention this idea I want to preface it by stating that it is probably not legal…. not sure. Anyway, I used to have a stock purchase plan at a company I worked at and it seemed like a good deal if you had money to invest from your paycheck. The way ours worked was you can take up to ‘x’ amount of your check (I think up to 15%) and have it put aside for the stock purchase plan. At the end of 6 months you get to buy company stocks at 15% of what the price was/is, either at the beginning of the 6 month period or at the end, which ever was lower. If you had say $1000 bucks put aside and the company stock was $5 a share at the beginning of the period and it was $8 at the end of the 6 month period, you would get it for $4.15 a share (that is 85% of $5 a share). That is around 241 shares (and I think we had to pay a small fee for the transaction… can’t remember). You can then sell the 241 shares at $10 a pop and it would be worth $2410 dollars…. that is one heck of a return! Even if the stock tanked I think you could still get the %15 profit.
I got to thinking, I work for a non profit so I do not have the ability to get into a stock purchase plan. There are also people within companies that do not take advantage of their stock purchase plans because they live paycheck to paycheck. What if you could enter into a contract with an employee of a privately held company to pay them what they would have taken out of their pay (plus a little extra) so they can max out their stock purchase plan and at the end of the 6 months they agree to flip the shares and give you the profit? I would think tax prep for the person working at the company would be an issue because they have to claim the earnings, you would have to compensate for that. Also, I bet the company wouldn’t be too thrilled about it either, they have better things to do than manage money for investors who use their employees as investing mules. Maybe non profits could get together and have someone run a mutual or hedge fund and offer that like a stock purchase program? Maybe it would be incentive for people to work there since the pay is usually a considerable amount less than in the private sector?

rfid, bar code, or bluetooth coupon device

ideaman — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 19:02:23 +0000

I am always amazed at the people in line in front of me at the grocery store who have a bazillion coupons cut out and their $120 total comes to $4.20 when they are done. What I don’t get is how they found these coupons and is the amount of time they took to find and cut these coupons and cut them out worth the $115.80 they saved?

It got me to thinking…. all the devices in the store already have barcodes on them, I wonder if you could create a device (attachment to a PDA?) that scanned bar codes that was hooked up via a phone cell or through a local Wireless LAN in the supermarket that could connect to a database that checked to see if there was a coupon somewhere available for that item? The device could print out a small strip of scannable bar codes to hand to the cashier. Better yet, once people follow the Walmart ultimatum to have every item for sale tagged with an RFID tag you could simple walk close to the shelf and it could get a list of the unique items in that area, check the coupon database and do a price comparison for all the sale prices versus all the coupons available and see which is the best buy? I guess you could use Bluetooth for this if the store put a bluetooth unit on the shelf for all of one type of item (ex: one bluetooth reader for all the 12 ounce Skippy jars).

I used to know someone whose brother worked for a major newspaper in Boston but he would get copies of the Washington Post and other major newspapers rom around the country. He would then cut out all the coupons from the other papers and use them locally and save a fortune. I guess the coupon folks coordinate what coupons to print according to what is NOT already on sale in the area.

investing book that i like….

ideaman — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:37:01 +0000

About 6 months ago a relative turned me onto a book by Joel Greenblatt titled “The Little Book that Beats the Market”. The book is short and is a quick read and is pretty informative for people like me with no educational background in finance (and no willingness to spend hours a day pouring over statistical information…. I’ve got better things to do with my time). I would suggest the book to anyone that wants to put some money aside for the long term, doesn’t want to spend hours a day tweaking their investments, and doesn’t flip out with the ups and downs of the market. I threw some money at this back about 6 months ago and it feels good to have a plan outside of my 403B and IRAs. The book is $20 but you might be able to find it used on Amazon or somewhere else for less.

trick yourself into paying off the big items

ideaman — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 19:32:24 +0000

I always thought that I would pay off my mortgage a lot quicker if I could chip away at it with the ease of using my credit card. This idea is not for those who have excessive credit card debt, I think this would be best served for those folks, like me, that live off their credit card, pay it off every month, but still find themselves buying some extra stuff on a whim. What if, when I make a purchase on my credit card and the item costs $5.00 I could tell the vendor to charge me $7.00 instead and at the end of the month they could send the $2.00 (or whatever had accumulated up) to my mortgage company towards the principal? As the monthly cycle goes on, I tend to have an idea of whether or not the upcoming credit card statement is going to be big. If I got in the habit of adding some extra money to my charges at the beginning of the month I would be less likely to buy some of the extra stuff on a whim later on in the monthly cycle. I usually pay all my bills at once when I get paid and by the time I go to write a check for my mortgage I have made a pretty big cut into my checking account with the other bills, one big one being the credit card. Maybe some of you out there think it is sad that I have to trick myself into being responsible with money but hey, there is a reason why credit cards are so convenient! I wonder if this would be a value add for the credit card company? They already hate people like me that pay off their monthly bills. The only benefit I can see for the credit card companies is that it is a service that might attrack customers. I think one point that would have to be ironed out is what percentage the store gets charged for the credit card transaction.