Debt, Credit Card & Consolidation Current News Digest

Shopping spree with stolen credit cards nets man conviction Kearney Hub KEARNEY — A Kearney man admitted stealing credit cards in December and using them to buy his children Christmas …

I am a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk. If you’ve never heard of him, he became famous for his online TV show, Wine Library TV, in which he brings wine tasting to the masses. Rather than being uppity and condescending, Gary’s everyman style is down-to-earth, passionate, and fun. He’s been known to compare wine to various breakfast cereals, candy, and even dirt occasionally. 2009 was a breakout year of sorts, with the publishing and promotion of his best-selling book Crush It!.

Before we get going, let me share what I love about Gary:

1. His admonition that in order to become successful, you need to hustle.
   Hooray! Finally someone on the internet that is not selling seven easy steps to make a bazillion dollars in four minutes a week. The people who accomplished really big stuff did it with a lot of freaking hard work.
2. His personable style.
   Gary is the man when it comes to connecting with his community. It comes down to one word: he cares. Okay, that’s two, but there’s no doubt that Gary is sincere in his love and appreciation for his fans and customers. Most businesses could use more of that.
3. His childlike passion and enthusiasm.
   Not just for wine, but for life in general. Watch Gary for five minutes and you’ll see a little boy who treats every day like Christmas morning.

Understandably, many people are eager to hear what Gary has to say about making it big and are willing to adopt his tenets in order to achieve their own success. But I find it alarming how often we chase down the secrets to success (whatever that is for us) without ever stopping to consider the side effects of the ideas we are so eager to implement.

In his speeches, Gary often advocates 18-hour days as a necessity for becoming successful. He certainly practices what he preaches. The long hours he works are common knowledge to those who follow him. With book promotion, media appearances, speaking engagements, consulting work, and his involvement in several businesses, he seems to be always on the go. He’s made public his desire to answer every single email he gets. Recently, he shared that he’s backlogged several months. To me, he appears trapped in a prison of everyone else’s expectations. But there’s no doubt: Gary works hard, hustles, and is busy beyond belief.

But I just can’t help but wonder, to what end?

He has admitted that his lack of sleep has contributed to an increase in feeling sick all the time. He appears to be a wonderful family man, but I can’t help but wonder how much time he is actually able to give to them with everything he has going on. I’m concerned that he will burn himself out. The stress he puts on his body might put him out of commission, which would be bad for him, his family and his myriad projects.

I realize that I’m flirting with danger here. After all, I don’t really know Gary Vaynerchuk. All I have to go by are the slices he shares online and in his speeches and book. Ultimately, his life and his choices are his business, not mine. But from an outsider’s perspective, he reminds me of many of the people in the audiences I speak to throughout the country. Even if I am completely and utterly wrong about my perception of Gary — and I hope I am — I still believe this is a discussion that needs to be had.

Because you know what? This post is not really about Gary Vaynerchuk. It’s about all of us.

What are we working for?

What are we really trying to accomplish?

Who are we trying to impress?

Ask anyone to name the most important thing in their life. Most would put family and relationships at the top of the list. And while it’s terribly easy to spout answers that make us sound like Ward Cleaver, it’s excruciatingly hard to look in the mirror and analyze whether or not our ACTIONS really line up with our WORDS.

In 2009, Inc. Magazine asked the CEOs of the year’s fastest-growing privately-owned companies the question, “Who is your biggest inspiration?” Kevin Burke of Centuria said this:

“My father probably — he’s a retired Fortune 500 CEO and a complete failure in the rest of his life. His mistakes motivate me to find a better path.”

I’ve shared stories with my wife Kim about business tycoons and internet celebrities who have achieved, in the words of Borat, “great success!” They enjoy varying degrees of fame, influence, and wealth. And, even though they are dizzy with exciting projects and joint ventures, they all speak about how important family time is to them. They seem to have it all together.

Kim has often suspected that their spouses might tell a different story.

When it comes down to it, the big question regarding family time and life balance is this: How important can anything be that you spend only a tiny percentage of your day (or week) on? And don’t give me the company line about your emphasis on “quality time.”

Quality time is a load of crap.

We are so quick to brag about spending “quality time” with our kids as a way to prove that we have life balance. The error is that we’re using our own definition of quality, not our kids’. The real question to ask is:

Does your kid consider your time together to be quality time?

Or is it organized activity and forced conversation squeezed into short time slots here and there?

The real world reveals the truth about quality time. A number of fathers could tell you about spending an entire day fishing with their child. You enjoy a great lunch on the boat, share some good laughs, soak in some sunshine, and even catch a few bluegill. But it’s only in the last ten minutes — as you’re turning into the driveway — when your kid finally opens up about getting bullied at school.

Your kids need quantity time out of the relationship with you. It’s not their job to be able to fit all of their stories and questions and hopes and dreams and fears into the sliver of time you’ve carved out as “quality time.”

Sometimes a meaningful interaction only takes five minutes. But sometimes you need five hours to get to that five minutes.

There are scores of people in the speaking business who are divorced or have kids that hate them. Why? They’re good people. But even though they accomplished important things and helped a lot of folks, they didn’t spend enough time on the things that mattered most. They allowed their careers to keep them on the road several hundred days a year. Ultimately, their “quality time” wasn’t enough.

The answer here is not an all-or-nothing one. I’m not suggesting that working hard is bad or that spending every waking minute with your family is the ideal. As usual, the answer lies somewhere in the middle and is difficult to find.

A mentor of mine offered some great advice early on in our relationship. He said, “Enough is as good as a feast.”

When you’re full, it doesn’t matter how many other things there are on the dessert cart. By all means, decide what’s most important to you and go out and grab it. Just don’t be afraid to let the other stuff pass by.

Success can be addicting and it’s easy to say yes to opportunities and projects that promise more of it. We can drive ourselves crazy in that pursuit, and we can drive away the people we love the most while we do it. Sometimes we need to say no to very good things in order to say yes to the best things.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wake up when I’m eighty-nine with a pillow full of regrets. I need reminders from time to time to take stock of my own life to make sure the highway I find myself on is actually leading in a direction that I actually want to go.

This post is an effort to be that reminder for all of us.

As a follow up to my article “Frugal Tips: How To Make 10 Ordinary Things Last Longer“, I bring you this awesome guest post by Mrs. Accountability. She writes at Out of Debt Again, a personal finance blog where she details her family’s journey to getting out of debt and living frugally. If you find the following tutorial on button sewing as impressive as I do, please consider subscribing to Mr’s A’s Out of Debt Again RSS feed. I’m one of her fans!

A Stitch in Time Saves Nine

One of the things I do when I buy a new (or used) piece of clothing is to check that the buttons are sewn on properly. Losing a button can ruin an outfit (thereby costing you money), so this is something you shouldn’t overlook.

Just before Christmas, my hubby bought me one of those long cardigan style sweaters. It was a gorgeous brown color, very flattering to my figure, but as is my custom, I checked the buttons to find that they were attached rather haphazardly. One of the buttons was attached by only one set of holes, while the others were threaded with just a few loops of very lightweight thread. I knew it was only a matter of time before one or more of these buttons would be lost.

Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that this is becoming more common with clothing especially when purchased from stores such as Walmart or Target. As a frugal person, I don’t want to lose buttons which would devalue the product, in some cases rendering it unusable (unless of course I find a replacement button or replace all the buttons). So here’s my frugal tip: when I find a loosely attached button, I take a few minutes to sew it on properly. Sometimes an extra button comes with the article, so I will spend another minute or two attaching the button to a hidden area; this pretty much negates my chance of losing the spare button. Plus, if I decide to donate this sweater at some time in the future, I know the spare button will go with it to the next owner.

Just a note: most buttons are probably sewn on with machines, so that is why in the next photo you see the one strand of thread going from the bottom right buttonhole to the upper left buttonhole. This is not the correct way to sew on a button, so don’t do it this way.

Guide To Sewing Buttons: How To Sew On A Button Correctly

Okay, so let’s get started on sewing your buttons!

You’ll need a needle and thread, and a pair of scissors. If you don’t have these items, you can easily find them in just about any store you shop — your local grocery or drugstore will usually have at least a sewing kit for sale. You can be a little more choosy if you go to a crafts store, like Joann or Michael’s. I would recommend keeping at least a spool of white and a spool of black thread on hand. Choose a needle that has a large eye for ease in threading; or if you don’t see too well up close, pick up a needle threader.

First thread the needle. The thread will feed through the eye of the needle more easily if you cut it rather than pull to break.

Once the thread is in the eye, pull a length of thread about 12-16 inches long. If you are using a needle threader, put the needle threader first through the eye of the needle, then feed the thread into the needle threader. Now pull the needle threader out of the eye of the needle and your thread will come through the eye of the needle as well.

Double the thread over so that you have 12-16 inches of doubled thread.

To make a knot at the end of the thread, wrap the ends of the thread around your index finger.

Then roll the thread down to the end of your finger, using your thumb.

Take the little mass you’ve produced and pull on it lightly to tighten it into a small knot.

Take the article of clothing and insert the needle on the underside, threading it out through one of the holes in the button.

Continue to feed the needle into the button from one side and then the other. Do this six or seven times until you are satisfied that the button is attached properly. Now on the wrong side under the button, make a knot by sewing into the material and making a loop with the thread, several times. When you feel confident that the thread won’t break loose, cut the thread.

If an extra button was included with the garment, sew it onto a hidden place on the inside of the garment using the same method. I usually sew one set of holes, so it will be easier to slip a pair of scissors under the button to snip it free if I need to replace a lost one.

By taking a few minutes to attach your buttons properly, you will prolong the life of your garment, and the next time you need to replace a button, you’ll be able to do it yourself!

Guide To Sewing Buttons: How To Sew On A Button Correctly

This guest post from Rich is part of a new feature here at Get Rich Slowly. Every Sunday will include a reader story (in the new “reader stories” category). Some will be general “how I did X” stories, and others will be examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success. Today’s is a romantic story of saving money on insurance. (Okay, no romance. That’s just a joke.)

As a long-time reader of Get Rich Slowly, I have really appreciated the tips J.D., guest writers, and regular readers in comments have shared with me over the years. Now it’s my turn to pay it forward.

About a year ago, I was laid off in Minnesota, right before Christmas. Oh no! Fortunately I was able to find a new job quickly, but it was out in San Francisco. What to do with the home we owned in Minnesota? We decided to rent it out, and we were also very fortunate to find good tenants very quickly.

However, as a newbie landlord I was quite surprised to find that homeowners insurance on your primary residence is quite different than insurance on a home you rent out. We went from $1,500 a year insurance premium (while living in the home) to $3,100 annual premium. Not being a savvy landlord, I sucked it up and thought “Well, hey, at least I’m employed, and I got the house rented, so be grateful.” And I was.

This year, my insurance company informed me the annual premium on my rental property would be going up to $3,650. Wow! I finally decided to shop around, and I’m really glad I did. I simply googled “landlord insurance” and easily found websites where I could type in my information (securely) and get a number of quotes. Different insurers seem to calculate premiums very differently from each other! Quotes ranged from around $1,350 to $2,000 for the exact same property, but nothing near the $3,650 my current insurer wanted.

In the end, I switched to an insurance provider that quoted me $1,345, saving me $2,305 on my rental property each year! While I was at it, I asked this same insurance provider to give me an auto quote. With my previous insurer, I had been paying $1,811 for two cars in northern California. With the new insurer, it came to $1,277. That’s another savings of $534 on annual auto insurance premiums. If you’re keeping track, that’s $2,839 in annual savings on my insurance needs.

My point isn’t that only people with rental properties should look into their insurance costs. My point is that everyone should look into their insurance costs. Just like calling up the cable company and negotiating a discount off your monthly bill (which I recently did, saving $35/month), for a few hours of investment, you too can get new quotes on your insurance needs and save hundreds, possibly thousands a year as I have done. It’s really very easy.

What am I going to do with this extra $2,839 this year, you ask? Sock it away in my short-term savings account, like every good GRS reader! Later in the year it could go toward my annual IRA contribution, or the 529 college fund for my teenager, or just sit around as a bit of extra financial cushion for the unexpected.

I’d love to hear other stories of readers saving a boatload on their insurance by shopping around a bit!

Reminder: This is a story from one of your fellow readers. Please be nice. After nearly a decade of blogging, I have a thick skin, but it can be scary to put your story out in public for the first time. Remember that this guest author isn’t a professional writer, and is just learning about money like you are.

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Insurance
• Use Your Grocery Receipt as a Cue to Save
• More Cheap Travel: Where the Hell is Matt?
• Reader Story: Two Approaches to Car-Buying
• How to Drive a Great End-of-Summer New Car Deal

Last weekend, The Washington Post published an article from Mike Rosenwald about the recent resurgence of haggling. To get a feel for the art of the deal, Rosenwald spent a week putting haggling to work in his own life:

For consumers like me who have spent decades shopping at full retail, getting a deal on previously no-deal items is liberating and invigorating, as I found out during a recent week I spent haggling. At first, my wife and friends asked me if I was crazy, but when I reported saving $3 on steak at Giant and $50 a month on our Verizon bill, they asked only one thing: How?

Just before Christmas, I spoke with Rosenwald about haggling. Though none of my tips made the final article (which is no big deal; that’s how journalism works!), he did profile long-time GRS reader Stephen Popick (who also volunteers as the GRS discussion forum admin). Rosenwald writes:

Popick is a well-paid guy — he can afford things. But he looks at price tags merely as suggestions. (Call him cheap, and he’ll thank you for the compliment.) For years, Popick has haggled down prices on ground beef, videogames, beer, bicycles, magazines, satellite TV and even the his-and-her plastic reindeer that adorned his front lawn for Christmas.

“I’ve always wondered why more people don’t do this,” said Popick, who lives with his wife in Alexandria. “This is your money. It would be wasteful not to do this, right?”

Taking lessons from Popick and others, Rosenwald gave haggling a try. He negotiated on everything from DVDs to steaks to cell phones. Final result? Rosenwald saved $730 in seven days.

As I’ve said before when this subject comes up, haggling isn’t for everyone. But if you’re brave enough to negotiate — and willing to put up with occasional rejection — you really can save money.

Here are some past Get Rich Slowly articles on this subject:

• How one reader uses haggling to save big bucks
• How to haggle
• You can negotiate anything
• Negotiate once, save thousands every year
• How I cut my Comcast cable bill by 33% (without losing any service)

Do you haggle? How often? Only on the big stuff? What rules have you set for yourself? How successful are you?

[The Washington Post: In tough economic times, shoppers take haggling to new heights]

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• How to Haggle
• Daily Links: Twitterpated Edition
• How to Afford Anything (But Not Everything)
• How I Cut my Comcast Cable Bill by 33% (Without Losing Any Service)
• How One Reader Uses Haggling to Save Big Bucks

On Friday night, we had some good frugal fun. Kris and I got together with a group of my old high school friends to go bowling and eat pizza. It was just like the good ol’ days — but with a bunch of grade-school children added to the mix.

Over pepperoni pizza and root beer, the conversation turned to the economy. I asked my brother Jeff how the family box factory is doing. “To be honest,” Jeff said, “we’re about to finish our best month since October 2008. And if you look at actual daily sales, this will be our best month since February 2008. It’s our best month in two years.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Maybe this means the economy has finally turned a corner.”

We’ve believed for years that sales at Custom Box Service are a fairly accurate barometer of the economy’s overall health; our sales always reflect where the country’s economy will be six months down the road. Sales at the box factory started to erode in autumn 2007, for example, before falling off a cliff in March 2008. Things bottomed out last February, with our lowest sales since the company incorporated in 1995. So, if the company’s sales are finally improving, we take that as a sign that the U.S. economy is on the road to recovery.

“How’s your business been doing?” Jeff asked our friend Ron. Ron’s family owns a wholesale nursery, and their sales have been down too.

“Rotten,” Ron said. “Last year was awful.”

“I think the economy’s been bad all over,” Kris said. “I just spent a week in eastern Oregon for work. It’s been a while since I was in Pendleton, and I was shocked at how many empty storefronts there were. A lot of places have gone out of business.”

“I keep waiting for things to turn around,” Ron said. “Just today we got a huge order, which is a relief. It’s an order we expected last fall. I’m just glad it finally came through. ”

“Yeah,” said Jeff. “I think a lot of people put off ordering because they were letting their inventories run low. But that just made things worse. Our sales were down so much last year that we couldn’t fund employee pensions and Christmas bonuses were a lot smaller than usual. At least we didn’t have to lay anyone off.”

“But January was a good month,” I said. “That’s a good sign, right?”

“Yeah,” Jeff said. “And another good sign is that some of our suppliers are raising prices. In fact, we think some of them will be going up 15%!” — Fifteen percent is a huge price increase for paper — “So maybe that means things are turning around. Or maybe it’s just a sign that there’s inflation in the future that’ll make things worse. I guess if you were optimistic, you could say these are signs of an improving economy. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but it could just be a brief peak on the roller coaster of the Great Recession.”

I, for one, am an optimist. (Not just about the economy, but all things.) I think things have finally turned a corner. Unemployment is still lagging behind (as it always does and always will), but from my perspective, the economy seems to have hit bottom, and is finally beginning to show some signs of improvement.

When I got home from bowling Friday night, I dug out the numbers for the most recent poll from Get Rich Slowly and MoneyRates. Since mid-January, visitors to both sites have been answering the question, “Where do you think the economy sits right now?” Here are the results based on more than 1200 responses:

• 2% — Strong growth. Full Steam ahead!
• 15% — On solid ground and growing some, thank goodness.
• 43% — Stagnant. Not growing, but at least not getting worse.
• 20% — Not horrible, but looks like it’s going downhill.
• 21% — Free falling. I’m bracing for the worst.

In general, GRS and MoneyRates readers aren’t yet optimistic. Many of you think things are stagnant still, and nearly as many think conditions are getting worse. Fewer than one in five believe that the economy is actually improving.

A poll is one thing, but I’d like to hear your actual thoughts. How do you feel about the current economy? Do you think we’ve finally hit bottom? Or are things still getting worse? How has the recession affected you and your family? What do you think it’ll take for things to get better?

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• 25 Everyday Things I’m Doing to Save Money
• What to Do If Your Identity is Stolen
• Steve Pavlina: The Power of Now
• Will the Credit Crisis Cost YOU Money?
• Advertising

The subject of this post comes from an article I found in my email box today, care of Consumer Reports. CR put together a discount calendar showing the best times to save money during the year (and for what items). They based the information here on industry surveys and publications, among other things. From their research, it seems that sales are less predictable than they have been in the past. But according to the Consumer Reports article (from which I’m shamelessly lifting a lot of this information along with their sales calendar image below), you may still get some money saving deals by looking for patterns in sales schedules and store circulars you receive. Some interesting advice on bargain hunting:

1. Don’t buy a particular item during a time when that item is in high demand. Some merchandise may actually be subject to some level of seasonality. For example, avoid picking up jewelry right before Valentine’s Day or Christmas time. I’d suspect you’d do much better price-wise, by picking up your next year’s Valentine’s Day gifts or holiday presents during the summer. You’ll just have to store them somewhere inconspicuous for a while. And there’s no better time to buy holiday decor than in January!

2. Monitor online deal sites like Ebates, which frequently offers double cash back rewards and coupon codes from their partner sites and merchants during the year. Their merchant network is one of the largest I’ve seen anywhere. Check out my Ebates review for more on this popular deal site.

For additional shopping resources, check out these articles:

• 21 Deal Sites and Online Tools To Help You Save Money
• Best Coupon Sites For Online Shoppers

3. Get the best prices for airline tickets from Tuesday afternoon to Thursday. Avoid buying tickets during the weekend as that’s when airline fares are up! Here are more tips on how to book cheap flights.

4. DVDs and CDs are typically released on Tuesdays. Find them on sale for the first one through three weeks after their release.

Best Time To Buy Stuff: Discount Shopping On A Schedule

And here’s the good stuff. Check out this Consumer Reports’ discount calendar that I referenced earlier, which shows the time of the year when certain items go on sale.

So any other good shopping tips? Knowing when to buy certain merchandise can help you plan your shopping around sales events, so that you don’t need to wait for those Black Friday bargains and Cyber Monday deals for the best prices. Besides, who wants to cram all that shopping into a few days (or weeks)?

Best Time To Buy Stuff: Discount Shopping On A Schedule

More folks in the U.K. have turned to loan sharks for personal loans as they struggle to repay bills, according to a new report featured in the Guardian. “The Real Cost of Christmas” was commissioned by the Circle Anglia, a housing provider, and written by the Financial Inclusion Centre.

Personal Loans for Desperate Families

Over the past three years, about 200,000 U.K. households borrowed money from loan sharks, a 22% increase. More than 100,000 of the country’s poorest families are going to spend this year struggling with a combined debt of about 82 million pounds ($133.2 million).

Interest rates on those loans average an 825% annual percentage rate (APR), which means these people are going to pay almost three times what they borrowed. Many of the loans were borrowed at Christmastime. Other people turned to loan sharks because they were unable to get credit elsewhere.

Loans Are Written Off

Loan sharks are not authorized to lend money. A government program set up in 2007 has helped about 10,000 people write-off illegal debts owed to loan sharks.

Although it seems like common sense not to use loan sharks, many people are so desperate to get some money that they are willing to suffer the consequences. Loan sharks also don’t check credit reports.

Predatory Lending

Loan sharks aren’t just gaining steam in the U.K. They also lend money in the U.S. and other countries. “During a time like this, predatory informal lenders have the advantage,” Brian Gurski, an educator at LaGuardia Community College in New York said in a Wall Street Journal article.

Predatory lenders also include payday lenders who charge exorbitant rates to loan money to people struggling to get by between paychecks. Payday lenders, also called cash advance lenders, roll over debts repeatedly when borrowers are unable to pay.

Personal Loans Come with Risks

Anyone tempted to borrow from a loan shark or other predatory lender should look for other ways to get their hands on cash. They should never work with unlicensed lenders.

Not only do borrowers end up paying too much interest, but there also is a real threat of bodily harm if personal loans go unpaid. Loan sharks also may threaten to ruin a person’s reputation if the money isn’t repaid.

Anyone who has already borrowed money from a loan shark should talk with a financial advisor, credit counselor, or even an attorney to find a way out.

Do you have a long-term project which you’ve stalled on? Perhaps you’ve got a half-written novel tucked away, or you started a blog that you haven’t updated for weeks or months. Maybe you began a big craft project – a tapestry or rug. Or you planned to redecorate the spare bedroom, but never got further than moving furniture around.

Chances are, you’ve got at least one big project where you’ve not made any progress for a while. It could even be one where you’ve backslid (like losing weight).

Should It Be Binned?
First of all, you need to decide whether it’s actually worth bothering. Sometimes, you start a project or work towards a particular goal – and in the process, you realize it’s not really that enjoyable.

Maybe you began a novel or a blog or a memoir, but you’ve found you hate writing.

Perhaps you started teaching yourself to play the guitar, only to realize that competence was a lot further away than you thought.

If the thought of resuming your project fills you with dread, it might be time to say “goodbye” to it for good. Take those too-small clothes to a charity store. Give away the craft materials you’ll never use. Put a post on your blog to say there’ll be no further updates. Do whatever it takes to get some closure.

If you do decide to carry on with your project, though, here’s what you need to do:

• Devote a Chunk of Time
  It’s hard to get up the energy to restart something after a long break. I find that devoting a big chunk of time really helps, because you can make serious forward progress. Starting off with just half an hour or so means you’ll barely get anywhere, and it can seem like a futile effort.

  Devote a whole weekend to writing the next chapter or two of your novel. Spend a day updating a long-neglected website. Schedule a whole afternoon to work on your craft project. You might even go on a weekend or week-long course.




• Give Yourself a Deadline
  Why did your project stall in the first place? Because you weren’t working on it consistently. The best way to keep up your momentum on a long-term project is to have a firm deadline in mind. You might want to pick a particular occasion – your birthday; next Christmas; the start of the school year.

  Write your deadline on your calendar. This is an instant way to get your mind focused, as it gives you a visual reminder of how much time you’ve got to complete work on the project.

  I like to set deadlines which are ambitious without being unrealistic: it’s good to push yourself a bit, but it’s not good to run yourself into the ground!

• Set a Regular Schedule – and Stick to It
  Once you’ve got a deadline, you can work back from that to figure out your weekly schedule. On a writing project, you might want to complete a certain number of words, or perhaps a chapter or section, every week. With a work project, you might have specific milestones to hit along the way. For some tasks, it’s easiest simply to decide to work on them for a set number of hours every week – an hour a day is plenty to get almost any project moving fast.

  I find that the key to sticking to a project schedule is to make that project a priority in the day. If you work on your business plan first in the day, it can’t get crowded out by other demands. Alternatively, set aside a particular time slot in your diary – maybe every Sunday afternoon, or a couple of weeknight evenings.




• Make a Public Commitment
  Finally, a great way to ensure you make consistent progress is to have a public commitment to your project. The accountability helps you stay motivated. There are plenty of ways you could do this, including:
  • Taking a course which involves producing regular work (I’m doing this for my creative writing)
  • Telling your blog readers about your goal
  • Updating your Twitter followers each day with your progress
  • Asking a friend or relative to keep you accountable
  • Having a friendly competition with a colleague

  The important thing is to get someone other than you interested in your project.

Have you got any stalled projects? What are they – and how are you going to get started on them again?

Facial recognition software. Trace portal machines. The Total Information Awareness database. And now, body scanners.  All these new technologies have enjoyed their day in the sun, immediately following terrorist attacks, as a potential magic bullet to keep us safe while traveling. 

But repeatedly, gadget defenses have shown themselves to be costly, flawed and difficult to implement. Meanwhile, they take precious resources away from tried and true counterterrorism measures, like hiring more highly trained airline screeners or additional State Department officials.

"Our reaction has been predictably irrational," complains Bruce Schneier, author of numerous books on security, including "Beyond Fear." "We're going to spend a lot of money and it won't make us safer."

Body scanners became an immediate focus of attention the days after the failed Christmas Day plot to bring down a Northwest jetliner. There are plans to more than triple the number of scanners in U.S. airports this year.  At $150,000 each, plus operations and maintenance costs, the machines represent a significant investment. David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University, says U.S. officials should think long and hard before spending that kind of money on terrorism-fighting technology.

"There's never a discussion of trade-offs,” Schanzer said. “…Everyone acts as if we can do everything. We can't. Public officials are often attracted to things that are visible, that they can point to and say, 'We're taking action to make you safer,' when instead they should be looking at the types of things that might give you more bang for your buck.”

For example, he continued, “Extra staff in State Department consular offices reviewing visa applications, people going to more interagency meetings, placing more personnel in our embassies to work with the British government so when they deny a visa we know. … These are unglamorous and can get lost in the budget. But they work."

Fighting terrorism and securing air travel involves tricky, nuanced discussions about resource allocation and risk.  But reasonable choices about risk are challenging in the emotionally charged atmosphere of terrorism, he said.

“We need to asses risk and look at limited resources and figure out where to most effectively deploy them,” he said.

'Magical thinking'
Schanzer said that, because fighting terrorism is as much about perception as reality, there is some value in taking steps simply to reassure the public.  

“Measures make people feel more secure, maybe that is a part of Homeland Security,” he said.

But Schneier said U.S. officials have fallen into the bad habit of encouraging “magical thinking,” suggesting that security technologies can make the world substantially safer.

“I wish Barack Obama would get up on stage and treat us all like adults and say, ‘We're doing our best but sometimes these things are going to get through, but we’re not going to change our way of life,’” he said.  “But politically he can’t do that. So instead he's going to respond to movie plot threats and we'll waste money. … It's very human that we fear stories, and the way to make people feel better is to secure against the story.”

While body scanners are the technology du jour, it is unclear whether they would have stopped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's alleged plot.  A scanner may or may not have shown a suspicious lump in his underwear, revealing the bomb-making material he allegedly secreted there. But even if it did, an airport screener may not have noticed it or deemed it a threat. 

Other existing technologies, such as the trace portal or "puffer" machine, may have also detected the presence of explosives on Abdulmutallab's skin or clothes.  Chemical swabbing — more commonly used today — might also have detected elements. But they can also be circumvented.

Regardless, the cat-and-mouse game of implementing technology and screening tactics to defeat already-used terrorist attack techniques is largely ineffective. After nearly 10 years of removing shoes while entering security lines, it is still highly doubtful another attacker will attempt a shoe bomb.  Explosives hid in body cavities will not be detected by new body scanners.

"All these strategies require that we guess the plot. Security that requires us to guess the plot correctly doesn't work," Schneier said.  "If we spend money on technology that protects against liquid explosives and they use solids then we've wasted our money.  If we spend money to protect the Olympics and they attack the Super Bowl we wasted our money. “

The sudden focus on body scanner technology is also misplaced, Schanzer said, because the attack technique used on Christmas Day wasn't new.

"Nothing changed the other day,” he said. “We knew about the threat (of a passenger carrying an explosive combination of chemicals onto a plane). Everyone was aware this was a possibility and the potential path of attack and yet we were not devoting extraordinary new resources into full body scanners. What's changed is the perception of the threat."

List is ignored
While even expensive new technology may have been ineffective against the failed attack or similar future attacks, existing tools might produce better results, Schanzer said.  Abdulmutallab had left plenty of red flags in his wake, including his father’s warning to U.S. officials. But that warning, and other intelligence, wasn't enough to place Abdulmutallab on the "no-fly" list that would have prevented him from boarding the plane to Detroit.  On Tuesday, President Obama placed the blame on a "failure to connect the dots." In the future, similar suspects will not be allowed to board flights headed for the U.S., he promised.

But Abdulmutallab was on a list – a government database called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE. While there may not have been enough information to permanently ban him from entering the U.S., clearly there was enough to flag him for additional, intense screening. It's unclear why all travelers in TIDE aren't always subjected to increased scrutiny, but lack of resources is a likely explanation. Atlantic magazine reported this week that the National Counterterrorism Center, which maintains the database, was slated for budget cuts in 2010 – and workers who maintain TIDE were slated for layoffs.

It's hard to understand the lack of added screening, given how easily the list might be narrowed on a daily basis, Schanzer said.

 “How many on that list have a visa? How many have international airline tickets? How many are paying in cash? There's lots of information out there," he said. "I don't think data mining is a dirty word to narrow down the people who present the greatest risk and should get far greater scrutiny. … Doing so is far more effective them applying expensive technology to everyone."

In fact, Schneier argues, some steps taken since the Christmas attack have made U.S. travelers less safe.  Profiling large groups of people — such as travelers from the 14 nations that are now subject to additional scrutiny — creates a dangerous two-tiered security system.

"Once you profile, you invite the bad guys to get around the profile," he said. "When you create a hard way and an easy way through security, you invite the bad buys to figure out how to take the easy way."

In the end, while the Christmas Day plot failed, terrorists may ultimately gain if substantial money is wasted on new technologies and Americans are subjected to longer airport lines and more hassles.

"Even after he failed, he succeeded,” Schneier said. “But if we didn't react with all this fear and panic, he would have failed even if he succeeded. Terrorism requires us to be accomplices. And we're really good at terrifying ourselves."

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